


The Mad Queen of Cleveland

by Hello_Spikey



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Body Horror, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-10-30
Updated: 2008-02-15
Packaged: 2019-06-11 08:41:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 53,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15311712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hello_Spikey/pseuds/Hello_Spikey
Summary: The slayers in Cleveland have a problem for which Spike is the solution.





	1. Angels

**Author's Note:**

> I done won an award!
> 
> "The Mad Queen of Cleveland by hello_spikey — This is a captivating look at Slaying in Cleveland, lively and entertaining, with a well-crafted, well-developed relationship between the two surprisingly well-suited protagonists, as well as a plot filled with fun, danger, wonderful original characters, old favorites, rivalries, snappy dialogue, and twisty goodness."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: None yet, other than gratuitous hometown showing off. Spike will indeed visit all my own haunts. So there. Eventually this is going to have Spike/Faith... and maybe some other naughtiness but that'd be giving too much away.

Giles and Angel came to him together, which was unprecedented enough. “There’s a problem,” Giles said, in the stern voice of a schoolmaster who expects he will be interrupted. “It’s at the Cleveland hellmouth. Faith is there and expecting you.”

“Expecting me?” Spike put down his videogame controller. They’d only been a few days in London, recovering. No one had said a damn thing about fighting any more good fights while their injuries from the battle in LA were still visible. They hadn’t even left their rooms until the splints came off. Frankly, Spike had been looking forward to nightfall, and stretching his healed legs in the city of his birth.

“We need you for this one,” Angel said. “Faith requested you personally.”

They were both looking at him like men prepared for battle. Or like babysitters look at an unruly toddler who has just been told it’s bedtime. Spike grimaced and stood. “Well then, when do I leave?”

“Tonight.”

“And who or what’s the baddie?” He shrugged into his coat – if he only had a few hours left in London, sun be damned, he was going out. (And how was that for his luck? One day in London and it’s sunny?)

Giles and Angel looked at each other. Angel raised his eyebrows and Giles fussed with his hands. Finally the watcher said, “Faith can fill you in with all the details.”

He should have said no right then. Maybe it was just nerves, the daily possibility that Buffy would come back from her current assignment and the conversation that would, or wouldn’t happen then. Dreading either alternative, and a hundred permutations thereon. So he left. Maybe at least they’d think he was being ‘a team player’ or ‘finally acting his age’.

Faith had failed to give the watcher’s council her address – even by carrier. Her paranoia would have done Buffy good back in the day. So they were meeting at a goth club called The Chamber. It was a dingy place on a street of mostly boarded-up Victorian storefronts. Spike parked his bike in the gravel lot and smirked at the appreciative stares of a gaggle of leather-clad teens.

The music was pumping out through the walls – synthetic and soothingly old. The eighties hadn’t left Cleveland yet. The corridor smelled of clove cigarettes and the talc of smoke machines. He smiled and pushed his way past the doorman who tried to get him to show ID, pay the cover, and take a stupid little wristband. “Thanks, mate, I’ll pass,” he said.

What’s the point being undead if you don’t take advantage of it once in a while? He felt the bouncer’s strong grip and just pulled his way back out of it. Yeah, Chuck, that’s how it is. Let the big bad through. Not that he wouldn’t pay a cover if there was a good band, or if there wasn’t a fuckin’ wristband. Lime green? That was disrespectful.

Then he stopped in his tracks. “My luck,” he said. The entire opposite wall of the tiny club was a mirror. He saw the bouncer behind him blanch white as a ghost. He saw the dance floor full of little kiddies, all their white bits glowing blue in the blacklight. He did not, of course, see his very conspicuous self. His head probably looked like a neon sign, considering the comments he got on the color without the benefit of ultraviolet.

He turned and grabbed the bouncer’s meaty arm. The man’s heart rate, already battling the synthesized drums, instantly increased. “Look, mate, just here to meet a friend. Not going to eat any of your kiddies, so just relax and pretend you didn’t see anything, right?”

The man’s nod was tight and barely perceptible, almost a shiver.

Spike felt an equally strong hand on his own elbow and turned to see Faith in a black top hat and corset. “Blondie, baby, put him down, you don’t know where he’s been!”

He relaxed into her arms. She felt and smelled familiar and sweet. He set his hands on her waist and squeezed the boned corset. “Pet, why’d you make me meet you in front of the biggest mirror in the Midwest? ‘S not exactly stealthy.”

She threw a hand over her shoulder. “Please, Blondie, like anyone’s looking at you. Come on, there’s someone I need you to meet.”

And just like that she was dragging him across the dance-floor – dangerously close to said mirror.

The dancers continued to gyrate and sway, looking intently at their own reflections.

Ah, humanity.

“So what’s this about?” He shouted over the music. Faith either didn’t hear him, or pretended not to.

The mirror stopped before they reached their back corner, where a young man and two girls sat together at a square table. One jumped up. “Spike!”

And once again he had an armful of slayer. “’Ello Rona. Faith keeping you busy?”

Rona let go of him long enough to slap him playfully. “That’s for being Mr. Self-sacrifice. You have any idea what your little immolation act did to a busload of over-dramatic girls?”

Spike tried to look cool, but his smile was showing. “Glad I wasn’t there to see it.”

“HEAR it more than see it. Andrew was the worst girl of all.”

“And you had the driest eyes in the room?”

“Hell yeah!”

Faith slunk around the table and put her arms around the neck of the bearded young man sitting there. He had a handsome face, glittering eyes, and curly, dark hair, with a meticulous beard that would not have been remiss in Spike’s youth.

“Rona, can you peel yourself off the vampire for a second? Spike’s gotta meet Connie, and Arthur here.”

Rona responded by wrapping her arms possessively around Spike’s and drawing him to the table. “Spike, this here’s Arthur. Our contact with the sleazy in Cleveland.”

Connie was a tall, dusky-skinned girl. She waved and glared, clearly irritated at being left out of the “meet Spike” party.

Arthur rolled his eyes and presented one ring-studded hand. “Always a pleasure to meet a friend of Faith’s.”

Spike tried to determine from Faith’s sloe-eyed grin what, precisely, was the purpose of this ordinary human at a table full of slayers. “Always a pleasure to meet a sleaze,” Spike offered, gripping warm fingers briefly. Arthur held his hand still, accepting the handshake but not returning it. Spike tried to ask Faith with his eyes, “Does he know what I am? What you are?”

Faith was not forthcoming. She ran her hands over Arthur’s dinner jacket. “We’ll leave you to hold court, baby,” she said, and dropped a kiss on Arthur’s cheek, which he turned to receive like he expected it. “Blondie and I have a lot of catching up to do. And a dance to dance!”

“Slayer…” Spike warned, but then he was bundled off onto the dance floor between three enthusiastic Slayers, who caged him in directly under the disco ball.

He gave in and danced; not that it was a hardship being surrounded by smiling, powerful women. Maybe Cleveland wasn’t going to suck. He glanced at the mirror: three black-clad young women grinding in each other’s direction, not too much space between them. Heh. Advantage of no reflection: he could see every detail of them while simultaneously bumping against their jacked-up cleavage and hot little bodies.

In his corner, Arthur could be seen occasionally to watch, and a steady stream of people came and went from his table. It would have been damned impressive if it weren’t for the plastic drink cups, the fluorescent handbills advertising bands, and the general dinkyness of the club.

One dance turned into three dances, with the speakers so loud there was no talking, and then a few gin-and-tonics for the girls in plastic cups, two more dances and a visit to the loo while he bummed cigarettes and charmed the desperately hip by the front door. By that point even the most self-involved teen in the place was watching him with awe, fear, or open adoration. Bloody brilliant, bringing a vampire to a goth club. Like brining Jesus to a revival picnic. Finally, Faith and her slayerettes tumbled out into the cool night, laughing and hanging on to each other.

“Mind telling me what that was all about?” Spike tossed his cigarette into the street. “Thought we were on a mission here.”

“Easy, baby,” Faith threw an arm around his neck. “This is the mission. Now, come on, vamp constitution here is driving us back to the house.” She pressed her lips into his cheek and a set of car keys into his hand.

He rolled his eyes and sighed. When had the big bad become the designated driver? But the girls were having a good time, and he couldn’t begrudge them that as they joked and laughed their way down the street to a yellow Volkswagen with an “I brake for steak!” bumper sticker. Someone (presumably one of the three slightly inebriated slayers he was risking his unlife hanging around) had circled the “e” in “steak” and drawn an arrow from it to after the “k”. “I break for stake” very comforting.

At least he got the driver’s seat in the tiny car. “All right, which way?” He peered out at the construction-and-parking clogged avenue. “And someone’s coming back for my bike, right?”

“Left, Blondie.” Faith didn’t turn around from addressing Rona, who was in the back seat.

“And which way on 117th?”

“Right.” She shouted, in time with Rona and Connie’s simultaneous, “Left.”

“Right,” Faith settled back into her seat. “And get in the left lane. Watch out for that… HEY ASSHOLE PEOPLE DRIVING HERE!” This last was shouted, leaning out the window.

Spike grabbed a handful of tulle skirt and pulled Faith back into the car. “So, talk. Unless you think this rattletrap car is bugged.”

“Woah – wait! Turn here. Lorain. I got an idea.”

“What? Why you want to take Lorain?” Rona smacked the top of Faith’s head. (She had removed her hat getting in to the car and then promptly forgot about it – the poor headdress was getting crushed by her feet.)

“To see the bridge. Blondie’s gotta see those hunky angel statues.”

“’Hunky Angels’ aren’t on my list of sights to see,” Spike said evenly. “Just point me toward the highway.”

“Turn left,” Connie said.

“Don’t you dare,” Faith grabbed the steering wheel. “Straight on. Come on, it’s worth it. They got these big angels holding cars in their hands. It’s like in that ‘Lord of the Rings’ movie.”

Spike raised an eyebrow. “They had cars in Lord of the Rings?”

“Oh, get in the left lane here – there’s always cars parked up ahead. And check it out – yeah, we just passed this great all-night diner. There’s a twerp I shake down for tips who busses there. Way nicer than going to Willy’s.”

“Yeah, we get pancakes after,” Rona added.

“Love, immortal vampire here. I’ve seen every size and shape city on the planet. Now either you’ve signed on with the tourism board, or you’re trying to distract me. I flew eighteen hours in CARGO to get here I’d like to know why before I’m bloody well tucking you in.”

To add to that, the statues, he thought, were very Angel: stony faces that couldn’t crack a smile if you’d cast a spell on them. He could have gone without seeing them.

“Now don’t distract me, baby, because I’m gonna show you a short cut to our place and we’re gonna pass some important cemeteries. Gotta give you the slayer-view tour too.”

“You want to swing by Lakeview? That’s not on the way.”

“Nah, we’ll just swing by Erie Street and Woodland. Lakeview’ll be it’s own day. Real posh place, Blondie. You’ll want to start sizing up crypts.”

He gave up and just drove, sifting direction words out of the endless conversation.

There wasn’t much night left when they finally were creeping their way along a tree-lined street, looking for a parking spot in front of dark and overhung Mission-style houses.

He swung the little car into the spot to a chorus of exaggerated screams. “If you don’t want fast and reckless you shouldn’t let me drive,” he chided and opened the door with a gasp of relief. “God I couldn’t take another minute of that.” He looked up and down the deserted street and thought about another cigarette while the girls got out.

Faith swung around to grab his arm and lead him up the sidewalk. “We got a real great deal on this place. Former occupant died mysteriously.” She shrugged. “Vamp. Anyway, we were just shy of suspiciously early in answering the ad. Got four bedrooms, plenty of space to kick around should more slayers get shoved our way. Besides Rona, Connie and me, there’s Quasar – yes that’s her real name – and Eliza. She just got here, fresh from stuffy British guy land.”

A yellow-painted porch lit up as they approached, a slight, boyish red-head and an Asian girl with an apple-shaped face leaning over the railing to wave and watch them approach up the steep, rickety steps.

“Quasar, Eliza,” Faith gestured to the two girls. The red head stuck out her hand, “Call me Sara.”

He smiled, he shook hands, he ignored a babble of questions about LA, apocalypses and “What was it like to work with THE Buffy Summers?”

When the excitement finally died down he followed Faith into the kitchen. He waited for her to emerge from the fridge with a bottle of orange juice. “So,” he said. “Mission.”

“Look at Mr. All Business. Didn’t Giles fill you in?”

Spike rolled his shoulders. “’You’re needed in Cleveland.’ That’s all I got.”

“We got a new big bad.” Faith got out a glass and poured herself some orange juice.

“And? We’re not getting paid by the hour here, luv.”

“AND this sitch is going to take all we got.” She turned to face him and crossed her arms. “Before we got here and set up shop, the Cleveland hellmouth was pretty self-regulating. There was a west-side vamp enclave and an east-side, and they hated each other’s unliving guts. The gang warfare kept the numbers down. Two weeks ago, west-side boss up and disappears. A week after that, the gangs are joined under new management. She’s calling herself the Queen of Cleveland, and nobody’s disagreeing.”

“And what was that all about tonight, meeting that Arthur kid?”

“That was my brilliant plan.” Faith tossed her hair back. “We had to get Arthur to see you. He can get us in to see the queen, and he has a thing for goth-punk, in case you failed to notice. Also, I needed to put you in front of that mirror.”

He squinted. “You want every nasty in town to know you’ve got a vampire shacking up with you?”

“I got my reasons, all right? Now, let’s talk sleeping arrangements.” She leaned her head back. “I’ve got the only queen-sized bed, wanna share?”

“I want my own room,” he said.

She rolled her shoulder. “Come on. We have five slayers here and only four bedrooms. Besides, you’re not Mr. Celibacy last I heard. We have some unfulfilled flirting between us.”

“I’m not Mr. one-night-stand, either. Never was.”

“You’re a vampire!”

“Yeah, and if you’re going to get racist about it, I’m definitely taking the couch.”

They looked at each other a moment and then both broke into grins. She put her empty glass in the sink. “Buffy missed the boat with a fun guy like you,” she said with half-hearted sarcasm.

“Well, maybe I’d feel more romantic, pet, if I knew why I’m here, and why you’ve been playing sugar-high girl to talk fast enough to keep me from asking.”

Faith grimaced. “I know I gotta tell you some time. But promise me you won’t freak out.”

He sighed heavily and leveled his best “I’m the big bad; I don’t freak out” glare at her.

Faith slunk back like a kid caught with their hand in the cookie jar. “They’re calling her ‘the MAD Queen of Cleveland’.”

She held his gaze. His face lost its belligerence. He looked at the floor, at the window over the sink, then fell back against the stove, hands in his pockets. “You think it’s her?”

“How many mad female vampires do you know?”

“We’re not the sanity club, generally.”

“Yeah, okay. Try this: the first act this ‘queen’ did was rob a vintage shop in Little Italy of all its china dolls. AND they say she has visions. I don’t need to see long dark hair and a party dress to put two and two together. Do you? She’s the bitch killed Kendra, all right, and gave me this crap destiny.”

His brows knit and he glared at her. He spun around the kitchen, coat following him like an angry cat’s tail. He stopped as abruptly as he started, eyes burning with betrayal. “Am I bait then?”

Faith smiled. “Something like that.”

“That’s it. That’s why you HAD to have me. Wasn’t because I can fight or plan or even the bleedin’ soul. You wanted Drusilla’s ex.”

“AND a great fighter.” Faith squared up, matching his gaze dead-on. “Don’t go all tragic on me. When it comes to super-powered emotional baggage, I called dibs in this house; you got it? I need you. The city needs you.”

He shook his head and left the kitchen. “I’ll sleep on the sofa,” he said.

She followed him into the front room, finding him pulling the blinds shut over the darkened windows. “Don’t be like that, Punk Rock. I had to be sure you’d come. We all know you and affairs of the heart, yeah? Olympic gold in ‘avoiding’.”

He tugged a chord and threw up his hand in frustration at the blinds on the side-window. “Good night, Faith. I’ll be out like a light soon as I make sure I don’t wake up ash.”

“That bed offer is still open.” She leaned against the pillar at the base of the stairs. “Hadda beat everyone arm wrestling to make it.”

He gave up on the window. “I’m not staying.”

“Hell you aren’t.”

He had to smile, a little, because it was inappropriate to smile when a slayer looked at you so defiantly, and because her eyeliner was all smudged and her hair was mussed and her cheeks still shone with sweat from dancing. “I haven’t decided,” he amended. “If I’m staying. I have a say in this. I’m not just some piece of equipment you sent to England for.”

Faith met his gaze directly for a long second, and then nodded once. “All right. Sleep on it. I’ll have Eliza get you some sheets and pillows.”

And then he was alone in a strange room, in a strange house, listening to feet running back and forth upstairs, water running, shouted commands in five female voices. Sleep on it.

He stretched out on the couch with a sigh. Drusilla. Or Buffy. He hadn’t exactly racked up the ex-girlfriends in the last hundred years, was it too much to ask to go somewhere and not face one?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Music note: does anyone out there know why a nice Englishman like Ian Hunter wrote a song about Cleveland? A kickin' song too. And no, I don't watch Drew Carey. He's a westsider. :P )


	2. Angels

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter illustrated!
> 
> Here's a [lovely picture of one of the Hope Memorial Bridge angels](http://www.bluffton.edu/~sullivanm/ohio/cleveland/bridgepylons/0011.jpg).
> 
> And here's [the angel Spike smokes next to](http://www.pbase.com/jerry_k/image/78925024) at Lakeview.
> 
> Okay, that out of the way. Enjoy! This chapter is kinda... domestic and establish-y. Hope it doesn't bore you.

Spike awoke to slanting afternoon sunbeams on the wall opposite and large yellow eyes blinking in his.

The cat screamed as he pushed it off his chest. “Slayer!” he shouted.

Eliza poked her head in from the kitchen. “You’re going to have to be more specific in this house!”

He gingerly touched the scratches on his chest and looked up with the tattered shreds of his dignity. “Why is there a cat?”

“He came with the house. We’re still debating names.”

“How about ‘lunch’,” Spike grumbled, standing to stretch. The sagging old sofa had not been comfortable, even for the dead. “And I repeat… where is Faith?”

Eliza disappeared again and re-emerged shrugging into a blazer. “In the shower, last I saw. And I’m late for work. See you later!’ She snatched a bundle of keys off a hook and was out the door.

A sudden twinge in his gut reminded him that he hadn’t eaten in over a day. Not since a quick cold cup just before the airport.

Spike had his head buried in the freezer, poking around packages of “Lean Cuisine” when Faith came in to the kitchen, rubbing her hair with a towel.

He turned and closed the door. “You ask a vampire to come to your home and you don’t even have any blood?”

“Don’t give me the puppy-eyes, baby, we thought of you.” She tossed her towel on a chair and opened a cupboard below the sink. There was a small cooler there.

Spike pulled it out and open. Four red cross blood bags, nestled in ice. He almost fainted with relief and grabbed one off the top.

“We snagged that just before the club – didn’t have time to find room in the fridge, and Sara was all kosher all of a sudden and didn’t want blood next to her milk.”

Spike lost no time finding mugs and figuring out the controls on the microwave – which was an enormous old model with more buttons than a space shuttle.

Faith squeezed past him and got milk out of the fridge. “I have work in another half an hour. Rona’s patrolling the flats, and Sara’s covering Lakeview tonight. You can take your pick, but I want you with one of them, okay? No lone gunning it when your ex is in town. They both have cells if there’s trouble.”

She had waved nonchalantly behind her and he saw now a whiteboard attached to the fridge with a map of Cleveland drawn over and colored into zones. The zones were numbered and named for their prominent cemetaries. On the wall nearby was a calendar marked “Slay schedule”. The microwave beeped. Spike took the mug out and grimaced. It had cooked just a little too long and some of the fat had left the blood to float on top. “Wait a tic. First: work? What’s this with work? I thought Rupes finally let the old watcher purse-strings loose.”

Rona came into the kitchen then, and set a bag on the table. “We all have jobs. The Faith crew pays its own way.” She slapped hands with the senior slayer in passing.

Faith sat down with her bowl of cereal. “This isn’t Team Buffy. We’re the blue collar posse and we don’t owe anyone anything.” She shrugged. “Well, except the down payment on the house and car, which Uncle Giles willingly parted with. Living ain’t cheap, Blondie. You should try it some time.”

“Second,” Spike paused to work his tongue against the roof of his mouth and dispel some of the greasy texture, “I’m not your bloody lapdog to order around. I’m heading out as soon as it’s dark, on my own, to find bloody Drusilla.”

“You aren’t going to find her,” Rona said, rummaging through the cupboards. “You think it’s so easy? We wouldn’t have had to ask you and your disgusting eating habits over.” Emerging triumphant, she tossed some wrapped bars into her bag. “I’m heading out. Gonna hit the Old Arcade before the sun goes down.”

“You should go with,” Faith looked at Spike. “There’s a hard-core magic shop in the Old Arcade: lot of demon loiterers. Or wait for Sara. It’s always hopping at Lakeview. Hell, we chose to live in Cedar/Fairmont just to be near the place.”

Spike poured another bag of blood into his mug. He drank it cold, getting the cooked taste out of his mouth. “Who died and made you queen of the bloody hill?”

She smirked. “You really want me to answer that? ‘Cause there’s a list. Kendra. My watcher. Buffy. Hell, even YOU, Blondie. Dyin’s getting to be not that impressive a trick anymore. And I’ve been kickin’ it, day in and day out, no help, while the rest of you take your dirt naps. So yeah, I think I’ve earned a little command here.”

He set his mug in the sink. “I’ll give Dru your regards.”

It was all bluster, of course. He couldn’t leave the house with the summer sun resolutely holding the sky. Would it have killed them to find a place with sewer access? Still he made it out onto the porch. He contemplated a quick run to the next porch and the next… the street was well shaded by oaks and maples that towered over the houses.

Yeah, sure. Passing breeze, lifting branch, hello Mr. Giant Pile of Ash.

He sat on a wicker chair and got out a cigarette. He could feel the sunset, if he closed his eyes and thought about it, feel how long he had to wait. Angel had joked it was the secret vampire answer to jet lag. Between keeping human hours and handling apocalypses, Spike doubted he was even capable of having a regular schedule. THAT was the secret vampire answer to jet lag. But at least he’d had some good blood, and a fag. He felt almost alive again. He pitched his butt into the road.

The redhead – Sara – came trotting up the sidewalk. “Oh, honey, you didn’t mean to do that, did you? That’s littering!” She retrieved the butt. Then she scurried up the stairs to present it to him on her open palm.

“Well what do you expect me to do with it, scarlet? Eat it?”

She pursed her lips. “You take it right inside and put it in the trash, young man.”

Spike was still gaping at the tiny woman when Faith stepped out on the porch behind him. “Hey, Q! What’s the word?”

Sara took Spike’s hand, turned it over, and dropped the cigarette butt into it. Then she brushed her hands together and turned to Faith. “The invitations are definitely out. No word yet on if we made the list.”

Spike put the cigarette butt in his pocket. “This have anything to do with visiting a certain ex of mine?”

“Told you I had a plan, baby,” Faith said. “Anyway. I’m late to work. Spike?” She dug deep in her pocket and came up with a flimsy card that she handed to him. “You can take the red line back to West 117th if you want to get your bike. Eliza’s got the car until late.”

Spike looked at the card. “Express Pass: June” it read in cherry red. “Public transportation? You’re putting the vampire on the bus?”

“It’s that or the vampire walks, like me.” She shrugged and took the steps down from the porch three at a time.

He stood on the top step, watching the dappled sunlight run over her hair as she strode confidently away.

“I thought you were going to come to Lakeview with me?” Sara said behind him.

“Change of plans.” He twisted the bus-pass between his fingers. “Stake a few for me, eh?”

It was a not-inconsiderable walk down Cedar Hill to the rapid station and a not-inconsiderable walk from the West 117th station to The Chamber’s parking lot, but he enjoyed the train ride. It was quick, and the passengers were quiet and few on the late westbound. He stood in the aisle all the way, practicing his balance against the starts and stops and sway of the train. He always had a thing for trains. Loved the rhythm and the vibrancy of a fight on a train. He looked over the defeated faces of late commuters and sighed. Was it too much to ask a vampire to be on the same car? He needed good violence to cover the memories that made him uncomfortably nostalgic.

The bike was unharmed – and that was a relief. Who knew what kind of neighborhood this was? He walked it out of its nook in the gravel lot and settled into the seat with a sense of taking hold of his destiny.

For a change.

First he just rode around – got himself good and lost. That was, in his experience, the best and easiest way to learn a new city. Get lost. He rode randomly down residential streets and business districts, scenting the air now and again, hoping for that hint of clover and jasmine that Drusilla always carried.

He ended up in some place posh, large homes with iron gates and walls. And it seemed to be getting posher by the block. He turned around. The sort of vampires who would take out a brownstone were not the sort he could infiltrate just tonight. Back toward downtown, he took a road less traveled – if the weeds were anything to go by – and found himself heading down, down under the plentiful bridges that spanned the Cuyahoga.

It was a neglected industrial wasteland – and so conveniently located, too! Storage tanks and mountains of dirt – ore, he supposed, but who the hell knew what people paid to ship these days – crowded rail lines and half-crumbled decayed warehouses, all keeping silent vigil under bridge pylons. He followed chain-link fences until they ended and urged his bike over curbs and gravel to ride along the riverbank. There wasn’t a soul in sight, just the echo of the bike’s engine and the clatter and hum of trains and cars crossing bridges to remind him the city was alive.

Then there was a crash and a body stumbled across his path. He spun into a stop, gravel splashing into the river.

Rona dove out of a ragged copse and tumbled to a stop right in front of him. The body, which Spike had narrowly avoided running over, jumped up and growled at her. That was all he got to do before she plunged her stake in his chest and Spike was waving dust away from his face.

“Decided to come after all?” Rona pocketed her stake.

“No. I’m reconnoitering. You’re in the way.”

“You won’t find the queen down here, man. Just minions and ship rats.” She turned and started back the direction she had come.

Spike walked the bike after her, kicking weeds as they caught. “Stop calling her that. She’s Drusilla, that’s all.”

“Just your ex, yeah, I imagine you see it that way. What’s your plan, then? Buy her flowers and ask nicely for her to stop being a crazy psycho bitch?”

Spike kicked off and swung the bike around in front of the confident slayer. “I’m going to kill her.”

“Right. Buffy told me how you tried that one before.”

“She’s my responsibility. Always has been. I’ll take care of her.”

She waggled her stake at him. “Relationship issues? You’ve got a full subscription.”

“Thank you, Slayerette. Now tell me how to get out of the industrial maze down here and to the nearest demon bar.”

She gestured north. “Get back on Canal, bat-boy, and follow it to Old River Road. That’ll take you into the north flats, where the bars are. You wanna turn on Center Street, just after the low-level bridge there’s a place called Tudor Tavern.”

“Too many streets there, girly. Back up a tick.”

“Just go that way. Look for the jackknife bridge. Cross the river near to that at the only place you can. It’s a drawbridge. On the other side you’ll see, yup, another bridge, only this one is stone and cut off. That’s when you’ll know you’re at the place. Happy?”

“Much obliged.” He turned the bike on and sped past her, feeling irritated and doubtful. This two-horse town was as empty as the echo of his bike on rusted metal pylons.

The bar was a bust. Fake stucco walls and week-old fledges playing pool. They had plenty to say about The Queen: mostly that no one could get in to see her, or even knew where she stayed. “We treat our royalty right around here,” a young vamp said, polishing his pool cue. “Distance. Respect. No tabloids.”

Spike grabbed the cue and staked him with it. That started a satisfactory barroom brawl, but all it got him was sore knuckles and a bottle of black label he grabbed off the bar as they threw him over it.

He just barely got the bottle out of the bar intact – it involved a lot of one-handed fighting. He drank half the whisky leaning against the stone end of the cut-off bridge – must have been too low for shipping or something. He smoked a cigarette and waited for the cop lights to go away, watching the brighter lights of the north flats, lit-up bridges and dance clubs. He went back to his bike and followed along the river some more until he found streets going up.

He explored the downtown a bit, stopped off at the Erie Street cemetery that Faith had driven past on the first night – which was not, incidentally, on Erie Street. There didn’t appear to BE a bleedin’ Erie Street. It’s formidable neogothic gate faced East 9th Street and it looked like just the sort of formal, inactive graveyard old-school vamps like Drusilla would want to plant their babies in. He leapt the fence and startled a few homeless – who turned out to be vampires so he dusted them after a quick brawl.

He found patches of disturbed earth that confirmed his suspicions – going by tombstones no one had been buried for keeps in this showplace for decades.

He caught himself eyeing a particularly nice crypt and sighed. He shouldn’t have staked those vamps so fast. Question first, kill second. Why was that so hard to remember? He kicked around the grounds a while longer, looking for anyone without a heartbeat, before heading back to his bike. It was already getting toward morning – bloody short summer nights. He decided to head to this acclaimed Lakeview Cemetery and see how that strange redhead with the anti-littering peeve fought.

He had to stop a polgara demon that was rooting through a dumpster on Carnegie Avenue to get directions. It knew nothing about Drusilla, called vampires leeches, and fit nicely in the dumpster when Spike finished killing it. But it did know how to get to Lakeview.

He would have thought it would have been north, along the lake, but surprisingly for a town built on a lake, he hadn’t seen the water save from the vantage of the river. The demon’s directions took him back in the direction of the Slayers’ house, up the long hill that separated out all the suburbs named “Something Heights”.

Lakeview was a big place, indeed, big as a theme park. The fifteen foot tall stone retaining wall that bounded it along Mayfield Road was topped with razor wire. He leapt the chained wrought-iron gate – he never had to deal with this kind of security in Sunnydale. It was a nice park inside, rolling hills, twisting paths bounded with flowers and old trees. Life-size mourners greeted him in draping stone robes. Mausoleums faced each other in miniature affect of the mansions their occupants had lived in; little lawns and walkways before them, keeping up with the dead Joneses.

Spike didn’t hear any fighting so he stopped by a marble angel and smoked a cigarette. She was a wilting Victorian of an angel, all soft features and sorrow. THAT was what an angel statue should look like. He struck a match on her outstretched wing.

He watched the clouds scuttling past the moon and felt the dawn ticking inevitably closer. He wandered. Finally found a group of vamps down by a pond. Dusted two and grabbed the third around the neck, “Congratulations, friend. You get to live. All you have to do is tell me where to find Drusilla.”

The fledge twisted and grabbed at his arm. “I don’t know anything!”

“Not a good way to keep yourself alive, mate. Minions who don’t know anything get their heads popped off.”

“Who are you? What the fuck! We were minding our own business.”

Spike wrenched the vamp’s head a little closer to his own. “And what business would that be?”

“Planting. Three new minions for the boss over by Wade Chapel. Fuck! What do you care?”

“Be happy I care enough. This boss have a name?”

To his surprise, the vampire in Spike’s grip stopped struggling. He squeaked, “What are you serious? We’re on the east side! Who do you think?”

“I’m new in town. Name.”

“Mose. His name’s Mose.”

“Well, call me old-fashioned, but I like to drop in on a local boss, pay my respects, like, before I hunt in his territory. Where does this Mose hang his hat?”

“At the temple, man. I can take you there. Just…”

There was a faint but familiar twang, and then a thunk, and then Spike stumbled forward as the body he had been struggling against turned to ash.

On the hill above him stood Faith, crossbow still cocked.

“I was using that,” Spike growled.

“You have any idea what time of night it is?” Faith sauntered down the hill. “The cross-streets between here and home are a MAZE, blondie. You’ll be caught out in the sun.”

Spike rounded on her. “Did you have some purpose for killing the only lead I’ve had all night? Or is this another step in the great ‘Keep Spike in the Dark’ crusade?”

“You want to meet Mose? You will, Saturday.”

“Saturday.” Spike crossed his arms.

“At the party Arthur got us in to,” Faith took hold of his elbow and started leading him up the path. “And there’s no keeping you in the dark. Full disclosure here. Mose is the east-side boss. He’s definitely going to be at the party, and if we’re lucky, Drusilla will be too. This is all going according to plan, except for you wasting your time beating up random vamps.”

“I’d rather meet this guy Mose at his home, yeah? Business meetings at parties never go right.”

“Then I’ll take you to the temple myself. But you’re not going anywhere but home now, baby, unless you want to sleep in Wade Chapel.”

They’d reached the winding path up to Mayfield Road. Spike looked back over his shoulder, at the pond with its attendant mausoleums and statues. A large white marble structure stood near at hand, a mini-acropolis ringed with yellow and red tulips. He could see yellow bleeding in to the horizon, heralding dawn. “Bugger but this night flew by.”

“Hell yeah. Q already went home. Give me a ride? My feet are killing me. Waitressin’ sucks, big bad, no lie.”

They walked together back to the gate. Faith pointed out the “Locked in? Call Cleveland Heights Police” sign and call-box, then laughed before jumping up to catch the wrought-iron and vault herself over the spikes on top. She was already settled on the back of Spike’s bike before he got to it.

“So this Mose,” Spike said as he kicked off the curb, “he was boss of the east side before, and he’s still around?”

“Yeah, I think we can call him a survivor. From what I’ve heard, he’s been here forever.”

Spike refrained from commenting on mortal ideas of ‘forever’. “Doesn’t make sense, Dru would kill the former boss when she took over. ‘S tradition.”

“Turn right here.” Faith wrapped her arms around his waist tight and leaned in to the turn. She brushed her cheek against his shoulder, getting the hair out of her face as they sped along a back-street. “With any luck, you’ll get to ask him yourself why he’s around. There’s kind of a zig-zag at Euclid Heights Boulevard, but go straight.”

With far more turns than should have been necessary, Faith directed him back to their sleepy street and the big old house full of slayers. She held the garage door open while he walked the bike inside, and showed him the security locks on the back door, how to key in. The sky had lightened to a pale teal by the time the door closed safely behind him and Spike let the slayer guide him upstairs to rest, all the while promising that the plan was worth it, that they’d have everything just as they wanted Saturday.

This slayer, he thought, as she put her crossbow away and shed her clothes, THIS slayer, who paid rent and waited tables, kept marker boards and somehow never looked rushed, she could make a good plan, and it could work.


	3. Meeting

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here 'tis! This chapter has sex! And I hope I don't jump the shark too much.

Spike awoke to a warm and pliant body against his own, and found himself reaching out and drawing her closer before he was fully aware of what he was doing.

“Mmm,” Faith rubbed her chin in the hallow of his clavicle. “Wondered when you’d make your move.”

He pushed her away. “Not making any moves. You’re just warm.”

“Come on,” she pushed back. “What’s with the prude act, Blondie?”

“Can’t use people like that anymore.”

“What?”

“Soul won’t let me.” He shifted onto his back and looked up at the cracked plaster ceiling. “I’ve done so many things wrong, pet. Don’t add yourself to the list.”

“You have a list?” Faith threw her leg over him and sat triumphantly with her hands splayed on his chest. “You’ve been over-thinking. You’re acting like AAAAANgel!” She sing-songed, laughing at his disgusted grimace. “Brooding like Angel, when you have a perfectly fine woman like me in your arms.”

“That’s low,” he said.

“Yeah, well, if I wanted to spend all my time talking about feelings, old Ang’ coulda worked as Dru-bait.” She frowned thoughtfully, studying his face. “You know, I think I can actually see your forehead getting bigger?”

He rolled over, pinning her to the bed and she laughed, rolling her hips up to meet his. “Fine,” he said. “You want to tumble? Think I wouldn’t love it?”

“That’s more like it!.”

“Work out our aggressions on each other? Nobody cares, right? YOU explain it to…” he stopped himself, cursed softly and shook his head.

She relaxed, looking disappointed. “Buffy? You think you owe HER something? She hasn’t been waiting for you in celibacy, ace. And I don’t think she’s asking you to.”

Spike sighed, letting himself fall a little, his forehead resting on her shoulder. “That was low, too. You spend all the time since Sunnydale working up lines to use on Big Bad?”

“No.” She smoothed his hair up away from his face. “All we got is right now. You gonna live in the past, or you gonna live?”

They locked gazes, and a smile crept onto his face. He kissed her. “You,” he kissed her again. “Are a kick in the arse.”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself. That part comes later.” She lifted against him, whole body straining as she kissed him violently.

They battled their way across the bedspread, kisses and bites spilling all around mouths and onto necks as they eventually tumbled off the bed and onto the floor. Faith laughed as the items on her dresser tinkled and clattered with the impact.

Spike paused to look at her, disheveled hair splayed all around, her little tank top rucked up and sliding off her shoulder. “My god I’m an idiot,” he said. “Look at you. You’re FAITH! I’m a bloody pillock.”

“If any of that means you’re gonna get back to the kissing, Blondie, I’ll agree.” She twined her arms around his neck and drew him in.

“Hey! Are you two knocking a hole in my wall?”

Spike and Faith rolled over and looked up at Rona standing in the doorway. Rona shook her head. “Damn. I owe Connie twenty bucks.” She retreated, closing the door.

Spike picked Faith up and dumped her back on the bed. She rolled easily to her knees and grabbed his waist to pull him down. He kissed her like he was trying to figure out how to. She kissed him like he had the last chocolate candy on earth in his mouth. Words failed to be useful, but the conversation continued. They looked, they kissed, they touched. For favor, for forgiveness, in entreaty, with joy. He eased her out of the boxer shorts she’d worn to bed. She threw him down and straddled him. “Now,” she smiled, “I believe I once said something about riding you until you popped like champagne?”

With a roll of his hips, Spike reversed their positions. “I don’t think so,” he said. He looked up, considering, “I think I will be in charge for this round, and I want romance and foreplay.”

Faith laughed, she hooked a leg around his and they tumbled together off the bed. “No way,” she said.

All awkwardness forgotten in the promise of competition, Spike nipped at her neck and growled. “I’ll just have to romance you into submission.”

“In your dreams. I’ll be seducing your ass so fast…”

And again the words had to stop, because the mouths were busy.

***

Rona winced as another crash sounded overhead. Connie looked up from her sandwich. “Dios mio,” she said. “We should check on that, Rona!”

“Believe me, girl, we don’t want to.” She picked up her bowl of soup and a box of crackers and went into the dining room where Quasar was sorting clothes on the table.

Rona pushed clear a corner and sat down. “What’s all this?”

“Costumes for the ball, silly.” Sara flicked a flimsy skirt in her hands, holding it up to the light.

“We aren’t all going. Arthur wants vamp-boy and one guest, and you know that’s going to be Faith.”

“Oh no, Faith and I talked about it. We need all the backup we can get, so I’m going. There’ll be a crashers' party next door. Want to pick something out? I’m thinking…” she wrapped a shawl around her face “Scheherazade!”

“Be the whitest Scheherazade ever.” Rona held up a hand to defend her lunch from wayward fabric. “Besides, I thought this was supposed to be all...” she rotated her spoon, hoping action could fill in for words.

“Fetish can mean whatever you want it to mean. MY fetish is fabric,” Quasar said, and wrapped another shawl around her shoulders. “Maybe I could do gypsy? Or Gypsy Rose Lee?”

“This is a mission, not a cotillion.”

Another crash sent the light fixture over the table swaying. Rona put her hands over her bowl lest stray bits of plaster fall in it.

In the kitchen, a chair scraped. “I’m going up there,” Connie said.

“Your mistake to make,” Rona muttered.

Uninterested either way, Quasar continued to sort her scarves.

***

Spike stepped out of the shower to find Faith, already dressed, sitting on the edge of the sink. He smiled. “Towel?”

She pointed to the cupboard. As he got a towel out, she said, “I just want to make sure things are clear between us, Blondie, before we head downstairs into gossip central.”

Spike felt a little tight feeling in his gut, but he didn’t let it on. He dried his hair. “What’s to make clear?”

She crossed her arms and tilted her head back. “I’m not Buffy.”

“I noticed.” He wrapped the towel around his waist and took up his own defensive stance. “Tend to know who I’m shagging.”

“Yeah, well,” she shrugged, and then, too quickly, said, “I don’t want any emotional baggage, all right? Whatever you had with her, whatever is the thing with slayers. I just… we were just having fun, right?”

His eyes narrowed, but then he relaxed. “You think this was all about you being a slayer?”

“I know you’ve got a thing.”

“Yeah, I got more emotional issues than Sad Sap Magazine. But whatever you’re worryin’ about,” he reached for her arm but she jerked away. “Just tell me. I’m not asking for anything, here. I don’t want to be your problem.”

“That’s all I want,” she said. “No problems. So… we good?”

Spike, not entirely sure what he was agreeing to, nodded.

“Great,” she slid off the sink. “Then go put some clothes on, Blondie. Before some low-flying plane catches a flash of that white ass and crashes.”

Spike waited for her to leave the bathroom, silently, awkwardly stepping around him. He gathered his clothes up and dressed.

He came down to find the girls in the dining room, trying on hats and feather boas.

“Hey, he’s all in one piece!” Eliza draped a pink boa around Spike’s neck. “Connie made it sound like the house wouldn’t be here when I got home.”

He pulled the offensively girly item off his neck immediately and tossed it – with all the accuracy with which one can toss a feather – vaguely toward the table. “Bit early for trick-or-treat, innit?”

“For the ball,” Quasar admonished. She shook her head. “We don’t have very much that’s manly, though. Oh! We could put you in drag. A sweet little corset and fishnets! You’d be darling.”

Spike’s eyebrows rose and he suddenly remembered that he was in a room with four slayers, any one of whom could overpower him. “Sod that! Faith!”

Faith snorted, turning over her damaged top hat in her hands. “It’s okay, Spike. I won’t let Sara dress you. The party on Saturday is a costume thing. ‘The Organ Grinders Ball’ – it’s a fetish ball.”

“You have to look kinky.” Eliza smirked. “Well, kinkier.”

Spike pressed a hand to his chest in mock affront and wished, not for the first time, to know what he looked like.

“Just put him in leather shorts and a dog collar,” Connie said. She was on the window-seat, flipping through a magazine that she held in front of her like a shield.

“No,” Spike frowned at the interested looks he was getting from Eliza and Sara. They were clearly already dressing him up in their minds.

“Oh! Just fishnet. Seriously, cut up a few pair and then we stretch them all over his body,” Eliza snagged a pair of hose from the table and Sara reached after them with alarm.

“No!” Spike threw up his hands. “That kind of to-do? Easy for a vampire. I’ll do piercing. If you don’t have any spare rings, we can do safety pins. Looks badass and hard-core and unlike the poor living sots who go in for that, I can take it all out and be right as rain by morning.”

“I think we can trust Mr. Bad to dress himself,” Faith said. She gave up trying to straighten the crushed hat and tossed it on top of the pile.

“Don’t any of you birds work today?”

“I sold a house yesterday,” Eliza said, folding a scarf. “I’m off until Tuesday.”

“He’s testy!” Sara tisked.

“Maybe because Drusilla is out there doing who knows what and you lot are trying to make me up like Freddie Mercury.” He stormed into the kitchen. “Where’s that blood?”

When Faith came into the kitchen, Spike was leaning forward, both hands propped on the top of the microwave, glaring at it as though daring it to spoil his breakfast.

“Easy there, blondie. The mission is five by five. We’re meeting Arthur in about an hour. Said he wanted to give us our tickets in person.”

Spike shook his head.

“What?”

He pushed off the microwave and turned to face her. Behind him it beeped. “I’m beginning to hate it when you call me ‘blondie’.”

“I like to nickname people. What do you want? Punk Rock?”

He shook his head, unable to explain what it was he felt, he knew she meant when she forced a casual distance. Instead he got the mug out of the microwave and tested its heat. Not a perfect 98.6, but close. He took a sip, safely not facing her, he said, “So that’s the plan? We meet with this Arthur today, tomorrow we go to this gala and there we meet Dru?”

“Or Mose at the least.”

Spike sipped his blood. “And whatever shall we talk about?”

“We confirm it IS Drusilla we’re talking about. You got an in, you can get an audience with her for sure. We draw her out and end her. Wam, bam.”

He finally turned to face her. “You’re putting an awful lot of confidence in my sway with the ex. She dumped me, remember?”

“I dunno. Your ex-girlfriends have a habit of not getting over you.” She seemed to look beyond him, wistfully.

“So is it about Buffy, then? Do you have a ‘thing’?”

Faith’s eyes narrowed. “Fuck you,” she said.

“Just want to know I’m not some ‘score’ in the slayer rivalry game.”

Without moving an inch, Faith shouted, “Rona!”

“What?”

“You’re going with Spike to Tommy’s. Got that?”

“What? It’s my night off.”

Faith walked stiffly into the dining room. “Well now it’s your night on. I’m going out. Gonna patrol East Cleveland. Don’t wait up.”

Four slayers watched in silence, frozen in their activities. Spike lounged in the door between rooms, finishing his breakfast.

“She. Is. Pissed,” Sara pointed after Faith.

“She’s gonna get herself killed!” Connie pressed her magazine into her chest.

“Nah, Faith can handle herself. Don’t you know that yet?” Rona pushed past Spike, flicking a finger at him. “Guess you’re with me, dead guy.”

***

Mose Cohen swept up the velvet-covered marble steps of the abandoned Cleveland Trust Company. Huge bronze doors were opened by tastefully hidden minions and moonlight (and streetlight) entered with him. He cut a thick shadow. He’d been a large man in life and seemed an even larger man in death, only partially due to the shoulders of his sharply cut pin-striped suit. He looked a little anachronistic, favoring the styles of the thirties of his youth. He wore no earring, no gold tooth, none of the flash people today seemed to expect of a wealthy black man, only a gold Star of David, safely on top of his shirt. He liked that – breaking stereotypes. And he liked the figure he cut, respectable, dignified, walking through doors that would never have opened to him in life, here, in his hometown.

A small figure scurried forward across the cavernous space of the old bank floor. “Mr. Mose, Mr. Mose … the Queen is agitated. We simply can’t have any visitors…”

Mose waved for his lieutenants to follow him up the last few steps. He heard it now, a faint wailing echoing off the vaulted ceiling. “Let’s see if we can’t help Her Majesty with her mood.”

At the top of a wide, curving flight of stairs, in a gallery lit by thick candelabras, a woman wailed and walked in a trailing white dress.

“No, no it’s lies! It’s not true! Oh, oh it is… it’s true and the stars won’t take it away.” Drusilla gripped the sides of her head and whipped around to face Mose. She sank to the ground. “My knight’s come, but not to rescue his princess. He’s come to be the dragon and eat me up!”

The aide held his hands to Mose’s chest. “She’s been like this for days. There’s nothing anyone can do.”

All along the gallery, dolls and flowers and lace fans had been set – presents to please and appease the mad queen. Mose crouched. With one thick, dark hand he carefully pried Drusilla’s pale fingers from her hair. “Here now, Your Majesty. It’s your Prince Mose. Come on. It’ll be better. Don’t I always make it better?”

Dru’s wide eyes rose to his. There was a hint of fear, and then she started to chuckle. “Oh, naughty! You’d take away the delicious pain.” She rocked back and glanced around as though surprised to find herself on the floor. “It’s awful how many mice want me to be happy.”

“The mice want to be happy themselves,” Mose said. “We have the annual ball coming and the magi, my Queen, they’re getting restless. I hate to disturb you but I need an answer today.”

“Peacock feathers,” she said, rising and letting her hand fall slowly from her temple. She swayed a little, fingers ghosting along her torso. “They want to prance about in front of the food. They want to be beautiful. They want to be eaten up. Oh, we’d have had such fun with them, me and my Spike.”

“I’ll assume Her Majesty means the ball,” Mose said, cheerfully. Already an underling was writing down his interpretation – the vampires of Cleveland all believed in the prescience of their new queen, but it took a tricky amount of interpretation. “Your Majesty, the Magi of Windermere? Shall we allow them their ritual?”

She giggled. “Mister Mose.” She pressed a finger into his chest and then twirled away. “Moses supposes his toeses are roses. And Mose supposes he’ll get angry with me.”

“Just a yes or no. Could we do that, this once? The ball has never been scheduled on one of the magi’s holy nights before. I don’t know if Arthur’s being stupid or too shrewd for us, but he’s crossing the Cuyahoga again. You know that isn’t allowed.”

“You shouldn’t press her. The lady has been traumatized by a vision! We’ve been trying to decipher it. Definitely a male figure, very important…”

“Cards,” Drusilla said. She walked with a sudden calm and self-possession to a little table draped with damask. A minion hurriedly handed her a deck of cards. She turned the first three over without shuffling.

Mose stayed here he was, and by his stillness restrained those who wanted to crane their heads and see. Drusilla’s cards were an odd mix of Tarot, poker, and picture decks. (Some he suspected were from collectable card games.)

“The lion,” she said, stroking a card. “We all watch him and fear his bite, but he’s a kitten at heart. We walk all around him. Grar!”

“She must mean a specific figure, perhaps Arthur?”

Mose grabbed the functionary by his shirt collar. “Would you let the woman work?” He pushed him away.

Drusilla favored him with an almost lucid smile. “The carpenter and the treasure-box. We’re going to the theatre.”

“You don’t see any danger from the Magi’s ritual?”

She ran her hand fondly over the cards. “It will all be perfectly lovely. Or perfectly wretched. But there’s no stopping now. Let the lion come, and the mice shall dance. Nothing will stop. It’s rolling forward now.”

Mose swept Drusilla’s hand up and kissed it. “Let the record state that the Queen foresees no reason why the Magi of Windermere cannot perform their ritual on the solstice.”

Drusilla smiled coyly at him, curling her hand back from his grasp. “I’m going to have a party,” she said.

“We all are, my queen. We all are.”

***

Dressed in an plain tan business suit, Arthur still managed to call up something of the air of a potentate when he stood to wave Spike toward his table at the back of Tommy’s – a trendy restaurant decorated in natural wood and prints depicting local landmarks.

“I thought Faith would be joining us,” Arthur smiled, extending his hand to Rona. Rona glared at him while he bent to press his lips to her knuckles. “Not that I’m displeased. You look radiant.”

“Manners are a bit posh for a place with sugar on the tables,” Spike picked up the glass canister in question and shook it.

“Spike, it’s a pleasure to see you again.” He extended his hand. Spike looked at it, and he drew it back again. “Do have a seat. Try a milkshake, they’re good.”

Rona shot Spike her best “Behave yourself, vamp boy” glare and settled into a seat. “Faith wasn’t feeling well.”

Spike ignored Arthur’s insincere inquiries into Faith’s health. He sat and folded his hands on the table. “Let’s have the invites, then. Hear it’s one hell of a party.”

“Very direct, isn’t he?” Arthur asked Rona. Still, he reached into his coat and pulled out a large black card.

It was embossed in gold, declaring that William the Bloody and Guest were welcome to the Organ Grinder’s Ball at Midsummer. Little gold flowers and hearts outlined “Appropriate attire required”. Spike twirled the card in his fingers, checking the back for magic runes before he tucked it in his pocket. “Right. Thanks. You can stay and eat, Rona. I’m gonna go kill things.”

“Spike…” Rona warned.

Arthur stood so fast his chair clattered. “I’m not finished,” he said. “And that invitation can be revoked.”

Spike had been half out of his chair. He paused. “I’m not in the mood, Mate. Make it brief, yeah?”

“I’m taking a risk, for your sake,” Arthur said, still standing. “A terrible risk. And I’m not asking for much in exchange.”

Rona’s hand was on his wrist. “Vampire, you sit your ass down and listen to the man we spent MONTHS getting this invite.”

Spike settled gracefully back into his chair, a slight smile on his face. “Just tell us what it is you want. But don’t expect me to put up with much; it’s only a party.”

Arthur adjusted his coat and sat down. “First, you will stay and dine with me. I’ll tack on to that, you will drink a milkshake. That’s for your own benefit. Secondly, I have specific requests regarding your attire at the ball. That’s all.”

“I don’t do requests.”

“It’s in your best interest. You’re not just another guest at a party, Mr. Spike. You are going to be the focal point of very, very important eyes.” Arthur closed his eyes and shook his head with emphasis, his dark curls bouncing. “And I have messages to deliver to those eyes. I promise, it’s nothing degrading.”

“There’s a hopeful promise. Very minimal,” Spike picked up the plastic-coated menu. “So, anything in here doesn’t have falafel?”

***

Stupid Vampire.

Faith scowled all the way to Lakeview.

Who was he to throw the ‘B’ word at her? It was only a fuck, for god’s sake. She wanted to see what it was like with a vamp. So? Why did she have to pick the one vampire with ball-and-chain eyes? Could have picked up a fledge, given him the time of his un-life.

She stuck her hands in her pockets and looked around the quiet cemetery, considering it. She was almost through to the Euclid Avenue gate and East Cleveland. Almost done with the walking and the useless wool-gathering and into mage territory to bang some heads. A mist was coming off the pond. A great blue heron stalked the shallow shores like a dinosaur. Faith found a stone bench and sat, watching the bird wade, its long head bobbing. Wouldn’t be any vamps about. Wild animals had a kind of sense about the undead – they bolted.

Faith looked through the trees, north, where behind a big-ass stone wall and streetlights ran Euclid Avenue, the Free Clinic, and one of Cleveland’s nastier neighborhoods. But here, it was quiet: and a heron, for Christ’s sake!

Maybe it was an omen.

A siren broke the silence. Wings spread, a splash and a flutter, and it was gone, disappearing into the trees up by the fat tower of James A. Garfield’s tomb.

Ball and chain eyes, she thought, and got up, following the sirens and noise to the north end of the cemetery. Soon they’d be at the ball. Soon they’d be rid of Drusilla. She could put up with Spike for a few more days. And then he’d go running off to his Buffy. And she wasn’t the least bit upset about that. It wasn’t a rivalry. You had to both be involved to be rivals.

She climbed the wall behind the caretaker’s cottage and looked out over urban blight. The Windermere rapid station glowed white in the near distance, the dark embankment of the train tracks behind it, and then darker neighborhoods, stretching block after neglected block to the lake. Time to go to work


	4. The Ball

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here it is, guys - The Ball! (dum tum duuuuum!!!)
> 
> Violence, outfits, and a fateful first meeting!
> 
> Tonight's illustration: [Bridges in the Flats, lit up for summer](http://www.sammys.com/gallery/l_flats-waterfront12.jpg) The yellow low-level bridge is the one Spike had to drive over to get to the demon bar in Chapter 2! The warehouse nightclub in this chapter is back and to the right of this shot.

Spike read and spoke a smattering of demon languages. He had a classical education, too, that he could occasionally dredge up to read Latin or Greek. In life and death he had learned many human languages. He reveled in all things low-class, urban and youth, and so he knew a thing or two about gang signs and graffiti.

With all that knowledge and experience, he had no clue what, if any, message was contained in the items Arthur had given him to wear.

A pair of black, fingerless driving gloves. A spiked chain choker. An earring with a ruby-backed spider dangling from a silver web. Maybe it was a clan symbol? They were all things he might have picked himself as accessories, which made him even more suspicious.

“Am I hanging a sign on my neck says ‘property of Arthur’?” He felt the chain’s position with his hand while Quasar took a digital photo.

“Someone should make a digital camera with a large screen display, you know, like a mirror for vampires,” she said, turning the camera around so he could check his latest adjustments to his outfit.

“The powers that bugger would find a way to make it not work,” Spike said, frowning at the pixilated picture. The color was washed out, turning the chocolate-colored walls of Sara and Eliza’s bedroom pink. He shrugged his shoulders. “Seriously, love, does this look stupid?”

“No!”

“Not too dated?”

“Honey, it’s timeless and classic!”

He was going bare-chested – considering his shirt options he thought it the most dignified choice. He’d hung the spider earring from one nipple, which was still red and puffy from piercing but would be smooth and perfect by the time they arrived at the ball.

“It’s tame.”

Spike turned to see Faith at the door. Her black leather pants and bustier crinkled as she moved. Her hair was pulled severely back, making her eyes look even larger, darker. “And what are you supposed to be?” Spike countered.

She smiled and raised the hand she’d been holding behind her. A collar and leash dangled from her grip. “Just call me ‘Mistress’.”

He blinked. “If there’s subtext here, love, I missed it.”

“Rona told me Arthur’s little dress-up demands. I figured the best we can do is mess with them. So we’re doing a couple’s costume. Don’t worry – this is as close to commitment as I get.”

“Where’d you go last night? The girls were worried.” Spike watched her with an inscrutable expression as she fastened the collar around his neck.

She had to shift the chain out of the way, and her tongue came out between her lips as she worked it. “Shook down some demons along Euclid Avenue. No big.” She stepped back, wrapping the chain around her fist. “There, Blondie. You look perfect.”

“I’ll get a picture,” Quasar said.

“No!” Spike said, as the camera flashed. He vamped at her, but she just giggled and took another one.

“C’mon, baby. Save it for the party.”

He blinked, and his eyes were back to calm blue. “Hang on, if we’re going to do the mistress and slave routine, we need more props.”

Now it was her turn to look confused. He smiled. Eliza had a stunning array of bondage gear laid out on her bed, and he made his selections like a connoisseur. Meeting Faith’s eyes as he held a cuff for her to fasten, he said, “So you weren’t taking my lack of tact out on the local vamp population?”

“I like East Cleveland. Cops don’t stop you if you carry a sword down the street.” She kept her eyes on her work, fastening stiff leather around his wrists. “Look, we screwed up, or we didn’t. Whatev. We got a job to do.” She patted his forearm and stepped back to study her work. “We gonna do this?”

Spike waggled his eyebrows. “Yes, mistress!”

They drove down into the flats, to an old warehouse on the west bank of the Cuyahoga surrounded by other warehouses that were now concert clubs or restaurants. It was nothing to look at on the outside. A freight entrance was bedecked with chilli-pepper lights and hung with sequined curtains. No one stood outside trying to get in.

“This is where we get off,” Eliza said, and she and Quasar toddled on their impossibly tall high-heels toward a more brightly lit entrance across the street. The ‘crashers’ party was in a nightclub called Trilogy. Eliza had already verified entrance requirements. She wore a business suit jacket over a body stocking, very butch next to Sara’s scarves and flounces. They would be just two lanes of blacktop away should trouble arise.

Spike and Faith walked through the sequins and found themselves in a velvet-draped room where four men dressed as Roman centurions stood guard. They could hear a heartbeat of the music inside, and the air smelled of fruit and flowers. The invitation card was taken – from Faith. Spike was holding his hands demurely behind his back.

Spike shouldered through the curtains as soon as the guard nodded, and got a jerk against his neck. He turned to scowl at Faith. “Mistress first, baby,” she said, and sauntered forward.

The curtains parted to reveal an aircraft hanger of a warehouse, cavernous, lined with lit tableaux and makeshift stages. Looking small, people wandered back and forth admiring the displays. There were suspensions, St. Andrew’s crosses, and so much black leather Spike felt tacky. One corner was all done up like a church with Gothic arches and flying buttresses in paper and plaster. Young priests gyrated around an altar in red and brown robes. Some displays had their own music and lights. Strobes and disco balls competed. Spike was caught between nausea and glee at the sheer liveliness of it.

“Wonder where the food is,” Faith said. She stopped, leash in hand, surveying the crowd.

To a vampire's senses, the room was food, spilling over with sweat and pulses. Spike jerked his head toward the center of the room, where tables were arranged in a cross-shape and draped with red cloth. “I say follow the herd.”

She nodded and led the way. “It’s like the Walmart of kink,” Faith surveyed the crowd, “They got everything.”

“Except that wanker Arthur. Isn’t this his party?”

Faith dove into the buffet, loading a black plastic plate with sushi rolls and little sausages. “You want anything?” She looked over her shoulder. Spike was all nerves, standing as tall as he could, straining to see over the heads around him. “I suppose I’ll have to feed you, being Mistress. Should I make you kneel for it, baby?”

He gave her a ‘just you try it’ eyebrow raise. “There’re vamps,” he said. “Smells like half the room.”

“Yeah. Slayer sense is dancing a jig, let me tell you.” Faith chewed a toothpick. “But most these folks are just human. Pervy, but human.”

“How are we supposed to meet anyone here? Me mum could be dancing the flamenco in bright red and I wouldn’t see ‘er.”

Faith smirked. “There was a random image, Dr. Freud.”

She noticed they’d moved to the crux of the table. Not just because of the mountain of cocktail shrimp. They had their backs to the table, making a defensive wedge. Oh yeah, Team Slayer was the life of the party. “Keep an eye out for a big black guy in a suit. I mean, prize-fighter type. With a Magen David around his neck.”

“Would that be our east-side boss?”

“Yeah. And he never misses this party.” Faith spit a shrimp-tail onto her plate. “If Dru doesn’t show, he’s our ticket to her. My sources say they meet almost daily. Planning evil board meetings or something.”

A flutter of iridescent feathers descended on them. “William the Bloody! I’m so glad you made it!”

Spike cocked his head in disbelief. Arthur extended an arm bare save the four-inch needles with peacock feathers inserted through the skin every half-inch, giving him the sense of having wings.

Arthur smiled. “It’s called a hand. You shake it.”

Faith stepped in front of Spike, the chain leash wrapping around him as she did. She slapped Arthur’s outstretched hand with her leather-gloved one, more of a jock-to-jock handshake than one would expect between a dominatrix and a bird-man.

Arhtur’s chest was bare and oiled, his nipples pierced, and below the waist he wore a white linen cloth embroidered with Aztec designs. “Thank you so much for wearing what I asked,” he said, as professional as he was in a business suit. “Stick around for the show. I’ll be dancing on the main stage at midnight. Feathers and flame.” He grinned with sudden boyishness, “It was awesome in rehearsal.”

With that he dropped Faith’s hand and was moving off toward another group of people, feathered arm raised to wave. Little pin-pricks of blood welled along each needle. Spike licked his lips.

Room full of vamps, and the humans were scenting the air with fresh blood. Hell of a party. Spike eyed the buffet, wondering if there was anything that could take the edge off. “Grab me a chicken wing,” he said, nudging his head toward a giant rosette of barbecued goodness.

Faith obliged, and he dutifully licked sauce from her fingers. While he had her attention on his mouth, he said, “I’ll be truly grateful, love, if you tell me what the fuck is up with that guy.”

“Nothing to tell.” She smirked as he curled his tongue once more, very purposefully, around her fingers. “Sara arranged our first contact. On paper he’s a patron of the arts, performance artist and, get this, lighting supervisor for the Great Lakes Theatre Festival. Like Mose, he’s been here forever, and like Mose, no one knows how old he is. But he doesn’t make my gut tingle. You smell anything strange on him?”

“He smells bloody delicious,” Spike smiled ruefully. “Human. Young. Powerful. Warlock, maybe.”

Faith frowned deeply. “Fuck,” she said.

Spike started to ask her what she meant by that particular “fuck”, but trumpets sounded and all eyes turned to the back of the room. Music boxes and flashing lights stilled. A group of women entered, all in white togas, carrying palm fronds. They were barefoot and walked in two perfect rows. They parted and a single figure appeared. She wore a blood red toga, gold bracelets, and a gold diadem atop her raven black hair. Her chin was up and her smile ferocious.

Drusilla.

She walked straight toward Spike, without seeing any of the people who tried to attract her attention as she crossed the floor. She kept her eyes on him as she made a curved path around the side of the buffet. The crowds parted like the Red Sea, and people on all sides bowed – some he was sure without knowing why. Spike pushed Faith behind him. Faith pushed back in protest.

Drusilla stopped four feet from Spike. She leaned forward a little, peering as though she couldn’t quite see him. “I don’t like this costume,” she said. “It’s all wrong.”

“Yours is lovely,” Spike countered. “Hello, Dru.”

Drusilla held a hand up to one side of her mouth and whispered loudly, “Psst. Psst. I’m not supposed to talk to you.”

“I thought you ran things here.” Spike noticed with alarm the number of eyes focused on them, calm eyes, eyes glittering with gold. “Doesn’t that mean you get to do pretty much whatever you want?”

“Of course, my Spike. But I’m not supposed to talk to you NOW. It wasn’t in the stars. I got impatient. The fairies will be quite cross.”

Spike pursed his lips. “And we don’t like it when the fairies get cross, do we?”

“Why won’t you look in my eyes?” It wasn’t her usual assertive manner when she wanted to bespell; her head was tilted, pleading. “Please. Look in me. Be. In me.”

Spike ducked his head, studiously avoiding her gaze. To those who did not recognize it as a move of pure self-preservation, it looked apologetic. “No, Dru. Not going to happen, pet.”

“You used to like surrendering to me. We’d take turns and everyone got all the hurt they could want.”

Spike felt a tug on the leash. He ignored it, keeping his eyes steady on Drusilla’s shoulder. Anywhere but her eyes. “Missed you, Dru. You know I have. Want to talk to you. But not here, yeah?”

“Call your dogs off, bitch,” Faith said, tugging hard, again.

Spike frowned, and noticed a circle of vampires had enclosed them, some of the ladies in togas, some of the guards in gladiatorial costume. It was still silent in the room. Someone coughed.

“Slayers. Always slayers. Should never have let you kill the first one. They infect you. Dance all around your head with their sparkles and light. And they never want to have any fun.” Drusilla looked down her nose at Faith.

“Yeah, well, I’m sane, so that’s one up on you.” Faith tossed her plate of food back at the buffet, letting it fall all over the place. “You want to do this? Let’s do this.” She stepped forward, leather gloves creaking with the force of her clenched fists.

“Faith,” Spike warned.

Drusilla clapped. “Yes. Let’s play!”

“No, Dru, no playing just now, yeah? Come on, we’ll go outside and look at the pretty bridges…”

“No, Spike. I don’t like that game. We’ll play my way. Kill the slayer!" She whirled around, shouting to her minions, throwing her hands out at them like throwing feed to geese, “Kill the slayer! Keep the Spike!”

As one, the circle closed. Spike threw a fan-kick at the nearest face and turned, grabbing the leash from Faith’s hand before it could be used against them. “Brilliant! You HAD to talk back!”

Faith grabbed his hand and swung around him, kicking a vestal virgin in the gut. “Me?” She spring-boarded off him and drew two long wooden sticks from her hair. “Like psycho-ex was going to have a quiet talk!”

Spike barely dodged a roundhouse heading for his head and ended up twisting free of three different arms trying to hold him. “That was the plan. YOUR plan.”

“Well,” a vampire exploded into dust and Faith threw her spare stake to Spike, “Plan’s gone south.”

Spike whirled, fending off a ring of attackers who were, thankfully, just a little bit uninterested in dusting, themselves. There was no clear path away from the buffet table, which was serving as their only cover. “Call the girls!”

“On it,” Faith dove under the buffet, already wriggling her cell out of her bustier.

Someone toppled the buffet table. Spike leapt over it, swinging his leash in one hand to ward attackers away. He searched frantically for Faith as the legions closed in.

Party-goers stood back. Someone, hanging by his elbows on one of the stages, snapped a picture.

Ignoring the melee, the party security team hurried to take the camera and remind the young man that photographs were forbidden at the ball. That a young man was dispatching well-dressed, paying members of the ball into piles of dust while his date squirmed around under an overturned buffet table? Well, they had seen worse, some years.

Faith kicked her way out of the table skirt and rolled to stand at Spike’s back. “We have to get OUT of here.”

“Workin’ on that,” Spike said, sounding irritated.

“Gate crashers!” A general cry went up.

Faith looked up in relief to see Eliza and Sara battling their way past the Roman bouncers. The security team rushed toward them, creating an additional barrier to escape.

“Sodding hell!” Spike leapt onto the still-standing portion of the buffet, knocking over a punch bowl the size of an easy chair.

Faith was directly behind him, and he felt her knee hard in his back for a brief second as she pushed off of him to leap across the room.

A henna-redhead hung from a chrome triangle, itself hanging by a twenty-foot chain from the high warehouse ceiling. Faith hit the girl and climbed up her to the trapeze. The girl thrashed and screamed, but the trapeze was already swinging from impact and Faith stood, flexing her body to drive it more.

Spike turned with a smile and gave Drusilla a salute before diving toward the exit himself. He only pushed and barreled past people – after all, hadn’t Drusilla said not to harm him? He paid no mind to elbows and arms, just going forward against an endless press of other bodies until he broke free.

Eliza was suddenly in front of him, a short sword in hand, her smart suit-jacket torn to shreds. “Get Sara!” She shouted.

Faith landed a few feet in front of him, and gathered up a fallen bundle of silk scarves that turned out to be Sara. Somehow, they broke out into the night and were pelting down the brightly lit street, past impassive warehouses. They’d gone two blocks before Spike broke off to get the car.

“How is she?” he asked as the girls tumbled into the backseat. “Faith? How is Sara?”

“Fuck if I know! Drive, Blondie!”

Spike divided his attention between the rear-view mirror and the road. Faith cradled Sara’s head while Eliza leaned over her, tearing fabric. “Press here. No… here!” Eliza moved Faith's hands.

“Damn these roads.” Spike turned sharply, the little car leaning and bumping onto a brick road. “One way? This wasn’t one way when we came down here. How’s our girl, Eliza?”

“She’ll live. Keep driving. Try not to shake us to death. Faith? Faith, try to get her to wake up. Talk to her.”

Faith blinked as though waking up herself. “What the hell did you do? You were supposed to secure our exit, not take on half the vamp army!”

“I need her awake, Faith.” Eliza ripped more fabric. “She’s going to be fine. Sara? Sara! Wake up! You’re going to be fine.”

The car bumped over another curb and the road turned blissfully upward, got smoother and wider. He glanced behind for pursuit. None, and somehow they were on an entrance ramp for I-90. Westbound when he needed East-, but freeway nonetheless. This was the point at which, if you weren’t chased, you weren’t going to be chased.

He started watching for an exit to turn around. Lake Erie swallowed all the view to their right in darkness. The girls were talking more calmly, repeated refrains of “You’re going to be all right. We’ve stopped the bleeding. Just relax, hon, you’re a superhero, aren’t you?”

Only then did he have time to think: he had seen Drusilla. Although he’d tried to deny, to hold out a little skepticism that it wasn’t really her, he hadn’t been surprised at all.

Dru. What was he going to do ?


	5. What We Talk About

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Major angst alert! Even the bad guys get to angst!
> 
> Also loads of plot exposition on our man Arthur.
> 
> This chapter's illustration: [The view from Arthur's window](http://www.bagu.org/clevelandFeb2005/img_1815.jpg)

Spike followed Faith into her room. “Let me see,” he said.

“Nothing to see.” She plopped onto the bed, pulling the covers over her fully-clothed form.

“Faith,” Spike said. “I know you have the same macho idiocy I do. So show the wounds.” He tugged the blanket. “Don’t tell me you plan on sleeping in all that leather.”

“Fuck off. Go look after Quasar.”

“Eliza’s got her.” Spike sat down on the edge of the bed and pulled one of Faith’s legs toward him. She kicked, but not hard. He turned her ankle over in his hands, feeling the bones all where they should be, and started unlacing.

Faith rolled onto her back, giving him better access to remove her boots. “It was my plan,” she said. “My brilliant plan.”

“Yeah. Worked, didn’t it? We know it’s Dru, all right.”

“No. It didn’t ‘work’. And I almost got Quasar killed. She got us in with Arthur, and I nearly got her killed.”

“Luv, she’s a slayer. Not an innocent lamb.” Spike finally finished unlacing Faith’s tall boot and pulled it off. “Gave better’n we got, didn’t we?”

Faith shook her head slowly at the ceiling. Her hair spilled out all around her, no longer in the severe ‘mistress’ bun. She looked younger, and more afraid than he’d seen her before.

Spike shifted her left leg closer and started unlacing the other boot. “I figure our next step is contacting this Mose joker. You said he never misses that party, and I didn’t see him about, so there’s something up there. Maybe him and Dru aren’t so friendly.”

“Spike, if you don’t stop mother-henning me, I swear I’m going to kick your leather-clad ass through the wall.”

He smiled and tugged her boot free. “Yes, mistress,” he said, dropping the boot next to its companion as he stood.

Eliza sat in the second floor hall, her back against the door to the room she shared with Sara. In her hands she turned over the short sword she’d gotten at the party.

“’S called a gladius,” Spike said. He closed the door to Faith’s room.

Eliza glanced up. “Roman? They all had them.”

“Yeah, well, except ancient Romans didn’t make ‘em out of stainless steel.” Spike squatted next to her. “How’s our girl?”

Eliza shrugged. “Lacerations a la ‘gladius’. You know… I was going to go to med school. I was in pre-med when the watchers called me.” She set the gladius’ tip on the floor and twisted it. “Maybe if I’d just stayed where I was, I’d be more useful now.”

“We could still get her to the hospital.”

Eliza shook her head. “No, I mean, she’s already healing up. And you didn’t have to deal with the questions and paperwork LAST time one of us were admitted. She drank some juice…”

Spike closed his eyes a moment. “Heartbeat’s good and strong,” he said, and smiled at Eliza’s look of mixed awe and worry. “Can hear all five of you, pet. And the bleedin’ cat. He’s in the kitchen.”

“That… that’s a handy skill. I wonder if vampires could be doctors,” she said.

Spike smirked. “Be a bit hard, keeping your fangs out of stock.”

“Hard for you? I’d like to think a vampire could have a career, if he wanted.”

“Who would want a career?” Spike stood. “Come on, girlie. Going to sit in the hall and mope all morning?”

“I want a career,” she said, taking Spike’s offered hand. She smiled tightly as she got to her feet. “Slaying or no slaying, once we aren’t facing imminent doom on a weekly basis, I’m building myself a career.”

“Got some bad news on that front, pet.”

“Don’t tell me,” she said. “Here,” she handed him the gladius. “Think I’ve had enough swords for one night.”

“You girls have a weapon closet?”

“In the living room.” Eliza set her hand on the doorknob and paused, unsure. “Thanks,” she said, and opened the door.

Spike slipped down the stairs quietly.

***

Arthur let a friend support him up the stairs to his apartment. He was just getting his keys out when the door opened and his wife took him into her arms. “Oh, baby, you’re a wreck.”

Arthur hissed through his teeth as Janine led him to the couch. “Yeah… smack some sense into me if I get an idea like that again. The feathers were awesome, but the candles? It’s supposed to be painful, yeah, but it’s supposed to LOOK worse than it is. Other way around doesn’t do anyone any good.”

Irregular welts from candle-wax overlaid the regular punctures and tears from the needles that had held his feathers, and, during the dance performance, lit tapers.

“Can I come in?” Arthur’s friend craned his head at the door.

Janine looked anxiously to Arthur. “Is he… special?”

“Ray doesn’t need an invite; he’s just being polite.” Arthur leaned back and waved to his friend.

Ray scowled, “Think I’d tell you if I got vamped, man.”

Janine shut the door behind him. “Sorry, Arthur’s friends are getting more ‘special’ every day.”

“Get me my cell, baby? It’s in my coat.” Arthur bent over the coffee table, getting a first aid kit out with feeble, wincing motions.

Ray said, “Shoulda seen it when we put the candles on. It was like heaven for five minutes, then I guess the first drop of wax hit – you could see the sweat sizzling five feet away! But your man, he’s fuckin’ stoic!”

“I’m sorry I missed it.” Janine handed Arthur the cell phone, taking the gauze and cotton balls he had been holding. “You got it all on video, right?” She sat down and took over tending to him as he worked the cell phone with one thumb.

“Mose was a no-show. That steams my muffin. He is NOT a man to make dramatic statements. If he didn’t come, it’s for a reason.” He held the phone to his ear. “Hey, it’s me. Did the ritual go as planned? … No news is no news, jackass. We have gods waiting on this. Yes. I put myself on the line for this! Find out!” He threw the phone on the couch and sighed.

“Shit,” Ray said.

“Easy, baby. Did they like your dance?”

Arthur sighed, letting himself fall back against the cushions. “It was a fire and blood sacrifice. That crowd? Of course they liked it.”

“Hey man, I’m sure the ritual went off. Nothing travels faster than bad news, and you know they’d blame you.” Ray fidgeted around the room. “Hey, why you got this picture of some black guy?”

“Carl Stokes,” Arthur said automatically, his concentration, and his eyes, on his wife’s ministrations to his arm.

“That’s a familiar name. He’s famous, right?”

Janine smacked her husband playfully on the thigh. “Carl Stokes was a mayor of Cleveland. And that isn’t his picture. Art just likes to say that.”

Ray scowled. “You think I’m stupid?”

“No. I think you could go to Carl Stokes High School and not know what he looked like.” Arthur smiled, fond of his own lies. “Anyway, that’s the guy who helped me get my start in the world. We called him Mr. Trick. He could arrange anything. It was something else, the couple years he came to town.” He fished the cell phone up again. “Do me a favor, Ray? Get those damn Magi on the phone. Just keep hitting ‘redial’ until someone says it was all worth it.”

“Baby, stop worrying. And hold still. Nothing’s going to change in the next few minutes.”

Arthur shook away her hands and walked across the room. His wife told Ray about Mr. Trick working to start the nightclub craze in the flats. She didn’t tell him he did it so Cleveland’s divided vamp population could have a centrally located hunting ground. He put his palms on the big picture window, looking over the river and downtown. The river he could only cross once a month, under cover of night, for three hours. That had been a gift of Trick’s too – the lessening of the curse. But that was the thing about a curse – having a little bit of what you wanted was worse, much worse, than having none at all. It kept you hungry.

“Everything’s going to change,” he said.

***

In the dark and masculine interior of the president’s office of the Cleveland Trust Company, a giggling Drusilla was laid on a four-poster bed.

The president’s portrait still glowered down from the fireplace, lightly coated in dust. Vampires were indifferent housekeepers at best. Mose had similar problems keeping his lair maintained. It was like herding cats, getting vampires to do anything coordinated.

Mose finally pulled off the last pieces of his Centurion costume. His suit was laid out, waiting for him on the massive carved desk.

“They tasted like blueberries and cake,” Drusilla said. She rolled over and crawled to the base of the bed. Her diadem was cocked, her lips still stained from the evening’s feast. “How beautiful they all were! And my Spike! Wasn’t he beautiful?”

“We lost three good warriors, tonight, Majesty. Is that what you saw in your visions?” He paused in re-fastening his dress shirt. “Did you know those slayers would come?”

“I wasn’t going to be there. And you weren’t going to be in disguise. The slayer would talk to you then.”

“Are you playing with destiny, my queen?”

She looked at him curiously while he put on his leather gloves. “Destiny? That’s silly. There’s no destiny. There’s only what’s going to happen. And sometimes it doesn’t happen, if I’m good and do everything right. But other times no matter how I try and beg and work, it happens anyway. Oh, that’s most all the time.” She twined her arms around the bedpost as though for comfort.

Mose always wore thick leather gloves when putting on his jewelry. He may enjoy the shocked glances wearing a holy symbol earned him, but he was no masochist to risk incidental contact. The star lay on its velvet pillow, waiting for him. “Well, majesty, I hope THIS time your prescience comes in handy.” He fastened the clasp and adjusted the star on his chest. Already he could feel a slight tingle through the fabric. “Or can you already see if that is so?”

She pressed her cheek thoughtfully to the wooden post. “The lion thinks he’s working against us, that his plans will make me cross, but he’s wrong. He’s building a lovely present for me and he doesn’t even know it.”

“You mean Arthur. My sources say he crossed the river. Met someone in Coventry for dinner. Someone who looked like your Spike.”

“Did he eat him?”

“No, my queen,” Mose chuckled, not sure which man she meant. “Both Arthur and Spike were at the party.”

Drusilla laid back on the bed. “I knew that. Silly mouse.”

“Your Spike was also wearing a defunct symbol of the West-side Mara clan. I don’t know if that was intentional or just the world’s weirdest thrift shop buy.”

“I hope he eats him,” Dru said with a wistful sigh, and turned to the blacked-out windows as though she could see the sun rising.

***

Faith took her lunch break on the patio of La Dolce Vita – the restaurant she worked at in Little Italy. If she sat in the farthest table, she could just see the ominous wall of Lakeview behind the clutter of shops and restaurants. It made her feel like she was keeping an eye on it.

The wait staff of La Dolce Vita got a glass of wine, a cup of cappuccino, and a bowl of whatever was the special of the day. It didn’t suck. Faith smoked a cigarette and checked the messages on her phone.

She almost dropped the phone in her gnocci gorgonzola. As if to confirm her shock, it began to ring, flashing the same number she’d seen in her missed calls. “Fuck,” Faith said, and pressed ‘answer’.

“What’s the what, B?”

There was a silence during which Faith foolishly hoped the call was dropped. Then she heard Buffy’s voice. “Is Spike there?”

“Here in Cleveland? Yes. Here in my lap? No. International calling, huh? How much is this costing you? Do they have roaming fees in Scotland?”

“It’s a flat rate. Now explain how I find out my dead boyfriend is alive again and then I find out he’s with you?”

“You’re calling him your boyfriend now?”

“Faith. I’m running out of words to describe the mood I’m in. Why did you do this behind my back?”

“Wasn’t no back to go behind, girl, you know that. I asked Giles for help. He sent vamp-boy.” Faith licked her lips, wondering if she should go there. Yeah, she should. “How’s Angel?”

“With Giles. Will you stop changing the subject? I want Spike on a plane back to England tonight.”

“Oh, B. I’d like a Ferrari. I don’t go asking random people for one.”

“You had no right to take him from me. Not you, not Giles.”

“Got nothing to do with taking anything from you, B. He’s got another ex to worry about.”

“He’s not my ‘ex’.”

“Death did you part.”

“God damn it, Faith. That is NOT fair.”

“I’m not sayin’ I don’t feel for ya. You should talk to him. When I get off work, I’ll give him your message. You don’t mind if he calls collect? I got bills to pay here.”

Faith saw her cigarette jingling in her hand and was glad this was a phone conversation. She at least SOUNDED nonplused.

“I’ll be at this number all day. You tell him to call me!”

“I can tell him.”

“Why are you being so mean? I thought we were friends.”

“We are friends, B. I’m totally on your side. I told you… fate of the world came first. Like it always does. But don’t worry about your boy. I’m taking care of him.” Faith couldn’t help the grin that broke across her face.

“You’re not making me jealous. Spike is…” Buffy’s voice faltered. What was she going to say? Faithful?

Faith couldn’t stop herself. “But you haven’t seen the pictures from last night. I’ll send ‘em to you. Ever got the boy to actually wear a collar, B?”

The phone clicked. Faith squinted a while at the display. Call complete, and the time. “Shit,” she said, tucking the phone back into her apron. “So much for me & B getting along again.”

***

Hough was a neighborhood that should have had a proud history, but it was too busy barely making rent. It had survived one of the largest racial riots of the sixties, but all that could be said of it was: it survived. Much like the synagogue-turned-Baptist-church-turned-community-center-turned-vampire-lair Spike faced now. Whatever colors the stones had been originally, they were now stained a uniform soot-black, and stained glass windows were hidden behind chicken-wire and half a century of grime.

“This is the place?” Spike looked to Connie, who scrunched back in the passenger seat, trying to look smaller than she was.

“I don’t think we should just go in there,” Connie said, not for the first, or even fourth, time. It had, in fact, been her mantra since they turned off of Chester Avenue.

“This Mose sounds like an old-school character. And those types respect a parlay. You just stay at my back, and we’ll both get out of this unscathed, yeah?”

“Faith didn’t want us to do this,” Connie said.

“I’m a little older than Faith.” Spike got out of the car.

“Dios nos libre,” Connie muttered, adjusting the strap of her purse on her shoulder as she followed him across the street.

A recently-turned minion in typical street tough clothes opened the metal-reinforced door without so much as a grunt of welcome. He just stood aside and waited for them to be through before closing and locking the door again.

Connie sneezed. It still smelled like a church – dry, dusty, with a hint of incense. A richly carved wooden screen stretched before them, blocking their path. The thug stayed where he was, by the door, his hands now folded in front of him, his head tilted back in silent challenge.

“Right, we’ll show ourselves in,” Spike said. They followed the wooden screen until it ended.

A bearded vampire in a yarmulke was sitting there, muttering to himself over a black book. He looked up as they approached. “What do you want?”

Spike peered over the man’s hands before the book was carefully tucked away. His lips curled. “Ethan Frome. God, have some taste. We’re here to see the big man, yeah? Tell ‘im it’s Spike.”  
  
Connie tugged on the sleeve of Spike’s duster. He turned and raised his eyebrows at her. “They’re all looking at me,” she whispered.

“Yeah? You’re a slayer. Tell me love, if a tiger came to call, wouldn’t you be mighty preoccupied?”

“I don’t feel like a tiger. I feel like a kitten.”

“They’re the kittens, love. You’re the tiger. Remember that.”

Connie willed herself to let go of Spike’s sleeve, to stand still and look calm, but the back of her neck and her spine were all tingling with the many vampires around. Spike looked confident. He leaned against the wooden screen and lit up a cigarette.

The bearded man came back and waved his hand for them to follow. They were led through rows of pews and past an altar that still held a tarnished brass cross from the synagogue’s days as a Baptist church.

They were led into a small, very ordinary office, where Mose himself sat at a computer. “I’ll be just a moment,” he said, and finished typing.

“Nice place you have here,” Spike said. “Two flavors of sacrilege for the price of one.”

“I prefer to think of it as a synagogue. That’s what it was when I first came here. The neighborhood was mostly Jewish then, of course. I had a job just down the block as a Shabbas goy. Paid shit. But they were the first family I ever killed.” Mose clicked a few things on his computer and then stood, hand extended. “Mose Cohen. Pleased to meet you, William. I have of course heard all about the slayer of slayers. It’s an honor.”

Spike shook the large hand with undue force. “Can’t say the same. This here’s Connie, the Vampire Slayer,” he extended a hand to indicate his companion. Connie gaped at being so blithely introduced. Spike continued, “Let’s cut through the pleasantries, yeah? I want Drusilla out of town. I want her to leave the state. The country if possible. The slayers here are going to hunt her down and destroy her if she doesn’t.”

Connie continued to gape. “That’s why you wanted me along, isn’t it? Sweet Connie, the quiet one… you think I’m not going to tell Faith?”

“Hush, luv, not nice to air personal business in front of company,” Spike said.

Mose settled back in his chair and tugged his suit jacket down. “Straight to the point, then. You are in my place, and my place is a house of God. There is no violence here. If you decide to break that covenant, I assure you, you won’t make it out. The building locks tighter than a vault, and we keep it locked.”

“Cozy,” Spike said. “Just deliver the message to Dru, yeah?”

“The funny thing is… she has a message for you. She saw you coming to me.” Mose spread his arms. “You know how she is. She wants you back. She told me to tell you that she’ll take you back, soul and all. She forgives you.”

Connie watched the confident sneer blank from Spike’s face. “Spike?” she asked. “Spike, you gonna tell her off? I mean, what’s she got to forgive you? She’s the one broke your heart, right?”

Devoid of any bravado, Spike quietly said, “Tell her I forgive her too. Come on, Con.” He turned and walked back the way he came.


	6. Making Plans

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter's illustration: [ The Palace Theatre lobby](http://www.flickr.com/photos/angelandmike/492648058/) (all appropriately crowded as usual during a performance.)

They had just gotten into the car when Connie’s cell phone exploded into a up-beat superhero theme. Spike gaped at her in shock, one hand still on the door from closing it. She ignored his silent comment on her ringtone and answered. “Yeah?”

Spike saw her sit up straight. “Euclid and Forrest Hills. Right. Hang in there!” She snapped the phone shut. “Rona’s in trouble! Drive! We need to get to East Cleveland.”

Spike started the little Volkswagen and, with maddening calm k-turned it on the side street. “I thought we were in eastern Cleveland.”

“East Cleveland, not eastern! This is the East SIDE. Madre de dios! Turn right!”

He muttered something about how bleedin’ obvious that was and cities with no imagination for naming their neighborhoods, but he dutifully turned onto Chester and began recklessly accelerating through traffic.

Connie held tight to the handle over her door. “I hope she called Faith and Eliza too. We’ll never make it in time. Oh god. Eliza’s in the flats and she doesn’t have a car!”

“Where’s Faith?”

Connie shook her head. “I don’t remember. Keep driving. I’m gonna call home.”

***

“Faith! Door!”

Faith had just jumped out of the shower to answer the phone. She turned, dripping, towel wrapped around her, toward Sara and Eliza’s room, where the bellow had come from. “Your damn legs aren’t cut off.”

“Wilkins is asleep in my lap!”

Faith grimaced and turned from the phone – voicemail could get it – to run down the stairs as loudly as she could, in hopes of disturbing the cat – which was definitely NOT named ‘Wilkins’ no matter how many times Quasar repeated it.

She threw open the door holding her towel with one hand and water dripping off her bangs. “If you’re selling something you picked the wrong house, buddy.”

A woman in a business suit regarded her coolly. “May I speak to William the Bloody?”

Faith lifted the front of her towel. “No. The vamp of the house isn’t available.”

“Then please give him this,” the woman drew a square white envelope from her jacket pocket.

Faith made no move to reach for it. “That a threat?”

“It’s an invitation.”

Faith raised an eyebrow. “He says no,” she said, and slammed the door.

***

Connie directed Spike down Euclid Avenue to a haphazardly built-up Victorian house with barred picture windows advertising “Rat Bait and Bibles”. Across the street were more barred and steel-gated graffiti-covered storefronts, and one bright, shining Taco Bell. “She said she was in the back,” Connie said, already half out of her seat, leaning out the window in hopes of catching sight of her sister-slayer.

“Is the sky supposed to be glowing green here?” Spike spun the little Volkswagen around in the Bibles-and-poison store parking and headed for the narrow drive between it and the next depressing enterprise.

Ronna ran at them from behind a dumpster, holding a battle-ax aloft like a flag of surrender. Five men in loose-fitting clothes ran after her as though she was leading them in formation.

“Open up! Let me in let me in!” She fought with Connie to get the passenger-side door open so she could fall into the backseat. “DRIVE!”

Spike had the car moving before the door closed, spinning around to send the pursuers scattering.

“NO!” Rona grabbed Spike’s arm as he turned onto Euclid. “Go that way! Up Forest Hill! We gotta get out of this suburb fast!”

The VW squealed and shook as it hopped two curbs, u-turning in the middle of Euclid Avenue. But at least traffic was dead. No one seemed awake, save that eerie green glow and the beacon of Taco Bell. Metal store signs groaned, waving back and forth in a peculiar, changeable wind, while bits of trash and plastic bags swirled through the air.

“You all right?” Connie asked.

“Somethin’ serious is going down,” Rona said, hugging her ax to her chest and looking out the rear window. “This freaky light… folks are saying it’s been in the air since like yesterday. Cops are calling it a chemical fire! Ha! THEY don’t even believe it. And people are going crazy – started with the homeless. Their eyes turn green and they’re just wholluping on anyone comes near them!”

Spike slowed down. “Zombies?” he said hopefully. “I LOVE zombies. Kill as much as you want and you don’t feel bad.” He spun the car around in the middle of the road, narrowly missing an elderly Lincoln Towncar that slammed on its horn.

“Spike so help me if you go back down there I will dust you myself.”

“Come on, Slayrette, what’s the harm in a few zombies?”

“They ain’t freakin’ zombies! You turn this car around right now or I am slicing off your head!”

Connie practically stood in her seat. “We are still driving! Put the weapon away!”

Calmly, Spike pulled onto the sidewalk. “How do you know they aren’t zombies?”

“Zombies don’t scream ‘What the fuck bitch’ when you chop their arm off!”

Spike nodded once. “Right. Home it is.”

Connie stared at his disappointed frown with open contempt, but sank back into her seat. She looked at Rona. “Sweetie, you okay?”

“Am I okay? You ever seen a mo-fo bleed to death right in front of you? That you cut?” Ronna hugged her ax even tighter to her chest. “I had to get out of there. Wasn’t no way to do it without hurting someone. God… they’re human. At least I /think/ they are…”

“A vampire’ll call you a bitch if you cut off his arm,” Spike said, very unhelpfully.

Connie punched him in the arm. Hard. The car swerved a little in response causing another near accident and horn-blowing contest on the quiet suburban street.

***

Buffy checked her email on a laptop in the town Starbucks. She had sent a very short message to Rona, and CC’ed the second most senior of the slayers (that weren’t Faith)  
in Cleveland.

_  
Rona and Quasar:_

_Whichever of you get this first, I want a status update immediately, and I want it from you, not Faith. What is Spike doing there?_

_Buffy_

She’d spent most of the hours since composing the message second-guessing it. Should she really have said ‘not Faith’? Wasn’t that just begging them to tell Faith and call her on her stupid high-school-clique style paranoia?

It was far, far too easy to click ‘send’. Email should have a built-in waiting period.

She’d checked her email at every available opportunity that morning. (And a few not-quite-so-available opportunities.) Now she saw a reply and almost couldn’t bring herself to open it.

It was from Quasar.

 __  
OMG I nearly died!! This is not hyperbole. Total sword to the gut! Think I lost a pound! Yay slayer healing! Why is Spike here? Wasn’t this all cleared at the home office? Well, typical! They leave the slayers out of the loop! Spike’s here to kill the vampire queen – they used to date!!!!! We went undercover to this fabulous ball and made contact. PICS ATTACHED!!! Anyway, we’re good here, all on schedule to defeat evil, bills all paid up, and I’ve finally got Faith to stop dressing like a street urchin!!!! (LOL!) I’m taking the day off, but already I don’t know why – that life-threatening wound is down to nothing but scar already! Working on ice cream and cat-petting therapy! Huggles big boss lady!!!! Sara.

Buffy blinked. Reading Quasar’s message was like getting hit by a canon-shot of glitter. She wondered what the girl was like in person. She’d seemed normal, name notwithstanding, in her file overview.

There were photos attached. Buffy opened them. Her heart flew upward and lodged in her throat. Spike. Her Spike. Doing his “I’m pretending to be offended but really I’m not” smile while Faith had an arm possessively around his bare waist.

She wanted to reach through the screen and rip that tanned arm away from him.

She wanted to have a right to snatch that arm away from him.

She wanted not to see him, smiling, alive, as human as anyone in a digital photograph. Or not to have seen him, now, and be feeling like she couldn’t breathe.

She opened her cell phone. “Hey, Andrew? No, not now. Look, I need a few days leave of absence and a ticket to Cleveland, Ohio.”

***

“I’m not going anywhere with that vampire ever again!” Connie pointed at Spike angrily. “He’s bad. And he’s going to betray us to Drusilla!”

“I am not.” Spike folded his arms and shrugged. “Well, on the second one anyway.”

“You went to the temple,” Faith said. “What part of ‘don’t go there without me’ did I stutter on?”

Quasar sat on the steps, looking down at the standoff. Connie was in tears, pacing the hallway that led to the kitchen and dinning rooms. Rona sat over the weapons chest, cleaning her ax like she was punishing it, and in the center of the room stood Faith and Spike in identical postures of defiance.

“Guys?” Quasar stood, smoothing down the front of her flowered dress. “Do you want Eliza to come home from work and find us all at each other’s throats? Is this what slayers are about?”

“Listen to Mary Sunshine,” Spike said, tilting his head toward Quasar. “Back off. We sit around doing nothing then nothing is what we’re going to accomplish.”

“He’s going to meet with Drusilla,” Connie said. “He said he forgives her!”

Not moving an inch from her stand-off with Spike, Faith said, “Con, hun, that’s a part of our plan.”

“No! You didn’t see him. He’s not thinking about a plan. He’s thinking about her.”

Rona dropped her ax into the weapons chest with a vengeful clank. “I’m not surprised,” she said. “He wants to go kill zombies. He wants to go run back to his evil ho-bag ex. Not big with the thinking, our vampire.”

Spike’s jaw ticked. “First off, I wanted to go back and fight because that’s what we DO, yeah? Soon as you said they weren’t mindless, I conceded the point. We need to research that bollocks. Possessed humans – not so fun. World of moral ambiguity there and you’re right – I don’t like thinkin’. I like knowing what I got to kill and doing it.”

“We aren’t talking about the zombies,” Faith said. “We’re talking about why Constanza here doesn’t trust you anymore. And I’m inclined to trust her. Connie doesn’t make snap judgements.”

Spike rolled his eyes. “Fine. Dru. We paid a call on Mose, and yeah, he said Dru wanted to get back together. And I wasn’t sorry to hear that. Would you be? Me and Dru were together a hundred years.”

“But she’s evil, and now you aren’t,” Quasar said.

Spike lost some of his tension. He sighed. “’S not that simple. Drusilla’s mad – she was driven mad while still alive. She isn’t responsible for her actions. If there ever was a vampire who’s not intrinsically evil, it’s her. She’s… she’s a sort of innocent.”

Spike found himself answered by a room of disbelieving stares. “Not that I’m going back to her, all right? That time’s past. But I’m not going to be mean to her or put up with a lot of bad-mouthing bullshit. We’re gonna get her out of town, right?”

“I thought we were gonna kill her,” Rona said, standing.

“Yeah,” Faith said, tilting her head. “I’m for dusting the bitch.”

“Dru isn’t some week-old frat-boy vamp,” Spike said. “You might not be ABLE to kill her. I asked her to leave town. She might just do that, and you’ll have your balance of power all back.”

“And what will you do, go after her?”

He looked from one slayer to another. “Go home,” he said, and pushed past Connie to get into the kitchen.

Connie folded her arms and glared at Faith, silently demanding her senior to do something about this.

Faith threw up her hands. “I don’t know what to do, okay? Rona, you find out what’s going on in East Cleveland. Call the council or something, have them crack a book.”

“Oh yeah, easy,” Rona muttered. She looked down at her hands and picked at the front of her shirt. “I’m gonna take a shower.”

Faith looked from Connie to Quasar. “Does anyone follow my orders around here?”

***

Arthur stood in the center of the Lorain-Carnegie bridge, cell phone pressed to his ear, curled away from traffic. “What about Ozzie? Is Ozzie there?” He pulled back and squinted at his indicator bars. He ran across six lanes of traffic to the other side of the bridge. “Hello? Gray? Yeah. What about Ozzie? No? What about Joe?”

He set a hand on the stone balustrade and looked out at the downtown skyscrapers. It was a misty night and their tops were hidden in lit clouds. “What about Perry? Susanna? Is anyone left in East Cleveland at all? Damn it, I was promised an end to the curse! I kept my side of the bargain! I… hello? Gray? Hello?”

Evening commuters crossing the Lorain-Carnegie bridge saw a small dark-haired man throw his cell phone at the city lights, screaming unintelligibly as it flashed briefly against the traffic light and then was lost in the misty depths below.

***

Drusilla danced around the lobby of the Palace theatre, her head back like she was catching snowflakes. She was wearing an exquisite gown of garnet-colored silk, encrusted with tiny beads like the crystalline sugar dusting a fruity desert. She fit in well with the white marble and red velvet around her, a few minions darting about like flies, as though the throng of well-dressed prey was any threat.

Mose pushed his way past the red-coated ushers with a flash of his board-of-trustees membership. “I thought all that talk of going to the theatre was metaphor,” he said, striding through the crowd without a glance for anyone but his queen.

Drusilla tilted her head, arms crooked before her like a ballerina about to pirouette. “My Mose. They have the most delightful stories! I’m going to change them all. Will you watch?”

“I can never get enough of watching you, my queen,” he said, and held out his arm to her.

She demurely wrapped her arms around his bicep and let him lead the way into the theatre itself. “Front row?” he asked. “Or do you actually have tickets?”

She responded only with a hum, as though he had said something clever that she hadn’t considered before.

A prodigiously fat man in a tan suit half blocked the aisle, sitting as he must with his legs splayed in his chair. As they passed, he snorted derisively, “What’s with the crown?”

Drusilla whirled on him, eyes flashing fire. “I am a princess!” she stated, and then turned to Mose to see if he’d observed the insolence.

Mose affectionately straightened her diadem. “I have news, my queen, if you are ready to hear it.”

She stopped their forward progress and stretched up on tip-toe to whisper in his ear. “When the doors close, they won’t open again.”

Mose glanced back at the wide lobby doors. Two of the red-coated ushers he now recognized as his own men. He glanced at the other door, where a vampire was leaning to whisper to one of the white-haired old ushers. Mose grinned widely. “So that’s your plan!”

Dru frowned at him and placed a finger in front of her lips.

He chuckled and patted her arm. “As you wish, my queen. Come, let’s get some good seats.”

***

Spike avoided the various expressions of the slayers. If they couldn’t understand the complexities of a grown man’s emotions, sod the lot of them. He didn’t even glance at Sara as she tried to catch his attention from the living room couch, but continued out the front door so he could smoke in peace.

He watched an old man in a Volvo creep down the street delivering papers. The dawn was creeping up, the sky a funny shade of lavender. He started to pitch his cigarette butt into the street, then, remembering Sara, turned to find a place to grind it out. Wouldn’t do to leave burn-marks on the slayers’ railing. There was an empty planter by the front door.

Not so empty. He saw a white card in it as he pitched his butt in. He bent and picked it up. “William the Bloody” it said in nice, neat handwriting.

“I shouldn’t be surprised,” he said. “When doesn’t the world fuck with me?” He ripped it open.


	7. At the Theatre

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hokay. This one is a little long. And I'm worried how yous will react. (To sound like my dad, who insists English has a plural of 'you'.)
> 
> Illustration for this chapter (and it might actually help you picture the action): [Playhouse Square](http://www.flickr.com/photos/25773647@N00/403926070/) from the Wyndam Hotel. The theatre marquees are, from the front of the picture to back: The Allen, The Ohio, The State, and The Palace. That's East 13th behind the Palace's building, which is the tall white one. The Ohio, State and Palace are all joined together on the inside via convenient walkways.
> 
> Warnings: Contains gross misuse of Shakespeare and blatant city tourism pimping. (*cough* second largest theatre district in America *cough*)

Elisa trudged up the street just as the first rays of morning sunlight were cutting through the houses and trees. Her shoulders were bowed, her satchel hitting the back of her calf as she let it dangle.

Spike sat on the windowsill, back from the encroaching sun, smoking the last cigarette in his pack, the invitation on his knee. Embossed. Vampire royalty didn’t fuck around with pre-printed hallmark crap.

“Tough night, career girl?”

Elisa dragged herself up four steps and sat down. “First this whole mess of Meklar demons – I think that’s what they’re called… well, they run really, really fast. Hit like a ton of bricks and I so don’t want to know what they were doing in the flats. One of them led me all the way up Tremont and half-way to Metro Health. Then, on my way back to where I’m SUPPOSED to be patrolling, I’m jumped by vamps in Lincoln Park, and by the time I finish THAT off, the buses aren’t running anymore and I have to walk all the way to West 25th to catch the train, but the station’s down for maintenance and so I have to walk to Tower City and by that point I could have just walked all the way home. Never mind all the back entrances were locked so I had to go all the way around Tower City to the Public Square entrance and the escalators were busted.” She laid her head on her knees. “Some smelly guy called me ‘China Doll’ and my feet hurt so bad my hair feels it.”

“Rona got jumped by possessed humans,” he offered. “And you missed a big pissing match. Finger pointing and the whole nine. I’d have rather been chasing vamps through parks.”

“Not helping,” she grimaced.

He pitched his butt over the railing. “Well, maybe if you moved out of the bleedin’ sunlight I could do something useful.”

She scooted up to the top of the stairs. “Like what?”

He sat down beside her and reached for her ankle. She obligingly leaned back and drew her legs up onto his lap. She laughed as his fingers dug into her tendons.

“Wot? Did that tickle?”

“No. Just wondering if this is how you get away with murder.”

He pursed his lips and pretended to be intensely interested in her calf muscles. “No. You get away with murder by hiding the bodies properly. This is how I get slayers wrapped around my bitty little finger.”

She stretched her legs out completely. “Well, consider me wrapped.”

The door opened and Quasar stepped out wearing a fresh orange dress and a lab coat. “Have you been out here all night?” She planted her fists on her slim hips.

“Was hardly night anymore by the time I came out here,” Spike said, nudging Eliza’s legs off his lap.

“What’s this?” Quasar bent to pick up the envelope (lined in red foil) that Spike had discarded. “Does everyone just throw everything on the ground around here?” She frowned at the invitation card.

“That was temporary ground storage,” Spike said, snatching the card out of Sara’s fingers.

“Was that from Drusilla?”

“Yeah. But seeing as how Faith’s convinced I’m going to turncoat, I’m not going.”

Elisa crawled over to peer at the card, which Spike pulled from her view and tucked into his pocket. “Drusilla sent you a letter?”

“It was an invitation,” Quasar said. “Like to a wedding or something.”

“Dru’s having a party – some theatre thing. But we’re not going.”

“The heck we aren’t!” Elisa stood up. “This is a great chance. We know where Drusilla will be. We could ambush her.”

“No, we couldn’t. She’s got an army and we’ve got five girls.”

Elisa smacked him playfully in the chest. “Five slayers ARE an army.” She plucked the card from his pocket and ran in the front door before he could react.

Quasar giggled at his outraged expression. “Don’t forget to pick up that envelope, hon, and I better not find cigarette butts on the lawn when I get back!” she said, and trotted down the front steps.

***

Le Nails salon on Cedar Road was always empty when Quasar started the morning shift, which she did every morning after a non-slay evening. (Retail jobs were handy to a Slayer’s schedule.) So she was more than a little surprised to find a thin Hispanic guy standing over her station, wearing the equivalent to a uniform for the urban thug crowd.

She set down her purse. “You want a manicure?”

He pressed his lips into a thin line, not rising to the joke, and thrust a folded paper at her. “Guy name of Arthur paid me twenty bucks to come here an' give you this. You’re Quasar, right?”

Quasar glanced down at her name-tag as if to confirm this. The young man snorted derisively and left the shop.

“Probably had cuticles like dried grass,” she muttered and sat down to unfold the note.

All the tightly-folded sheet of drawing paper said was: Tonight. 7pm. The Big Egg.

Quasar’s supervisor, Cho, minced across the room on her impossibly tall heels. “Was that guy your new boyfriend?” she asked in a stage whisper.

Quasar tucked the note in her pocket. “He wishes! But I’m not going to discourage the boy until there’s jewelry.”

***

“The vamp has a point.” Rona lifted her spatula and leaned to glance into the living room, where the vamp in question was still sacked out on the couch. She looked back at Faith, who was scowling at the morning paper. “We need to do something or we’re just doing nothing.”

“Huh. Says here Playhouse Square’s shut down. Some gas leak or something from the Euclid road construction.” Faith tossed the paper so it landed, folded, on the other side of the table. “Gas leak. Next it’ll be PCP gangs. Doesn’t anyone ever come up with a new cover story?”

“The thing about a cover story is, it’s supposed to be boring.” Rona looked over at the article. “We oughta check that out. That’s hitting the high-rent district, and you know vamps don’t do that. Not casually.”

“Yeah, this one’s a dress-up torment. Three theatres shut down until further notice. Thousands of dollars in ticket refunds and some Broadway troupe has to reschedule their visit.”

“So are we doing something?” Rona poked the paper. “Or are we doing nothing? Reacting. This could have something to do with that freak show over by Windermere last night.”

Faith pushed her hair back against her skull. “I don’t know. I don’t know. I had a plan, damn it, and it was simple. Easy. Get Spike here, he takes out Drusilla.”

“Yeah, real perfect. Time for plan b.” She flipped open the paper. “They say anything in here about East Cleveland?”

“Please. A bomb could go off down there and the Plain Dealer wouldn’t report it. We got a hell mouth here and if it weren’t for deciphering the cover stories, you’d think all that happens in this town is sports. Um, Rona? Eggs?”

Rona scrambled back to the stove, lifting the smoking pan off the fire. “Well, fuck!”

The fire alarm over the door started to beep frantically. Rona smacked it with her spatula, smashing the plastic.

Faith stood up. “Hey, next time take the battery out. We gotta buy those.”

“No, Faith. This is what I mean. This is it. All of this.” She waved her spatula from the burnt eggs to the destroyed smoke detector. “Reacting. We got to act, or we just end up cleaning up, like we’re the eff'n maid service of the damned!”

Spike clutched the opposite sides of the door-frame. “What are you harlots doing? You’re waking the literal dead.”

“Breakfast,” Faith said.

“Planning,” Rona said, and smacked Spike in the chest with her burnt-egg and plastic-encrusted spatula.

Spike picked the spatula off his shirt with two fingers. “I hope it’s planning because ‘breakfast’ is looking like an experiment in torture.”

“Someone’s locked down Playhouse Square. It’s either the zombies or your honey,” Faith said.

Spike dropped the spatula in the sink and looked for a rag to wipe the egg and crud from his shirt. “That’d be Dru,” he said.

“Or whoever possessed all those people in East Cleveland last night.” Ronna folded her arms. “Either way, we gotta make a plan. We gotta do something.”

“No. It’s Dru. As in ‘I know’.” Spike looked up from dabbing his shirt-front. “I found an invitation on the porch. Said to meet her at the theatre.”

“Oh yeah,” Faith stood up. “Some skank brought that. I told her you weren’t interested.”

Spike threw the rag in the sink. “Did you? This making decisions for me, is it just a slayer thing or can anyone join in?”

“You sayin’ you want to go meet up with psycho-vamp?”

“Wasn’t that your soddin’ plan?”

Faith tilted her chin up. “Kinda. Until you decided to slip out and warn the enemy.”

“Woah! Woah!” Ronna held up both hands. “You want to have your lover’s spat and doom the whole city, go ahead! But not with me in the middle!” She scooted around Spike to the door.

“This isn’t a lover’s…” Spike glanced at Faith and saw fire building in her eyes. “HELL. Faith? We got a time and place. Let’s ambush while we can.”

“I don’t trust you,” she said, and started folding up the newspaper. “For that plan to work, there’s got to be trust, and there just isn’t. So we’re at square one. Looking for a new plan.”

“You honestly think I’d throw you lot over for Drusilla? Crazy, evil, DUMPED ME, Drusilla?”

“No. But I don’t think you have the guts to kill her. You’ll hesitate. Like Buff did with Angelus. And just like then, we’ll all pay the price.”

She raised an eyebrow at his glare, knowing she’d hit her mark.

Spike flexed his fists. “I’m not some love-struck teenager. I get my opening, I’ll strike. I can and will kill her.”

“You keep telling yourself that you might start to believe it.”

He turned away. “Fine. Then make your plan so someone ELSE kills her. Damn it, we have a team, right? Any hand can hold a stake. I’m going back to bed. Not even bloody noon yet.” He ran a hand over his eyes and started toward the door.

“Wait.” Faith came around the table. “Show me this invite.”

***

The scene at the Palace Theatre was festive. Drusilla had ordered the modern lighting scaffolds to be taken down where they obscured the woodwork and all the extra bars and beams were put to use on the stage, where “The Lion King” had been scheduled to appear. Actors from the touring company moved anxiously through their lines, this being the fifth repeat of the performance for their captive audience, and on each previous repeat at least one cast member had been singled out and killed for some arbitrary, inscrutable mistake. A wan-faced audience-member was now filling in for a chorus member. They’d run out of understudies.

Drusilla wafted back and forth on the edge of the orchestra pit, leering at the musicians. “Oh!” she stopped and clapped. “Is this the part where Robin Goodfellow finds the fairy flower?”

Mose, sitting in the front row, didn’t look up from the booklet he was reading. “It’s not ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, Majesty.”

“Well this won’t do.” She leapt over the pit and actors scattered behind the torn and altered scenery. At center stage she stomped her foot. “Where’s Puck? Who will be Puck for me this time?”

Mose set his book down in the lap of the dead body seated next to him. “Randy?” he raised a hand and a minion came running. Randy wore an usher’s jacket, the blood dripping down his shirt-front matching nicely with it. “Randy, did you and Cherise get that Shakespeare group rounded up?”

“They’re holding them in the Ohio Theatre still, sir. Should we bring them here?”

“We’ll let Her Majesty decide. My Queen?”

Drusilla looked up from the bent neck of an actor dressed as a baboon, her smile dripping red.

“We can get you ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’. Would you like it brought here, or would you like to go there?”

She dropped the dying actor and skipped forward. It was a wondrous thing, to see a vampire in an evening gown leap, her glittering scarf trailing behind her in the flootlights. She landed at Mose’s feet, temporarily stooped to catch herself with one hand on the ground, a reversal of their true positions. “Do I get to be Titania?”

“Of course, my queen.”

She giggled. “Oh! Then let’s go! This stage is all used up.”

Mose stood and crooked his arm. “Lead the way, Randy. This place is all played out.” He chuckled at his own pun, listening to the gasps and sobs from the remaining humans, awakening to hope that their ordeal was done. “Childs? Keep this place sealed up.”

The minion at the door nodded to him, stepping aside to hold it open and bowing to the Queen.

“So am I Oberon?” Mose asked as they crossed the now-deserted, opulent lobby.

“Of course not! Silly. You’re my Hindu boy. Oberon wears horns.” She cupped a hand over her mouth and leaned to him, “That means he’s a cuckold!”

They passed through a damask and chandelier-lined corridor to the wide ticket lobby in front of the State Theatre. Through the bank of glass doors they saw the glittering police cars and riot police like so many black beetles. Bullhorn-muffled voices urged about releasing hostages and meeting demands. Mose smiled. “You’ve made everything different, my queen. Look at us! Bold as brass. I’d have never attempted something like this, something this… artful.”

Through the garish painted State Theatre antechamber they passed into a short, mirrored corridor and then a small rotunda with white statues and a false night sky. Drusilla cackled with delight and reached up toward the twinkling electric stars. “Phosphorus and Joy dance on the fairy prince’s shoulders!” She spun on one toe.

“All for you, my queen.” He glanced further down the corridor, where a line of minions walked back and forth, casually keeping the Bulkey Building next-door secured. “How long will we be staying in the theatres? That audience was large, but they’ll run out, eventually.”

Mose felt a nagging worry, which he tried to suppress, that his queen was NOT concerned with, say, everyone but herself dying in this bold move. He didn’t see a way out of their situation, wonderful as it was.

Drusilla tripped over to him and pressed her cheek to his chest. The Magen David sizzled against her brow. She giggled, as though delighted, and looked up at him, a tiny dark star over one brow. “Little mouse! Trust Princess! The lovely monsters are coming. Woosh! All the pretty people running, afraid, no time to worry about vampires.”

“But how long?”

She rubbed a hand down the front of her gown. “Mmm… until my prince comes. Now the play! I do hope they have a funny Bottom!” she danced forward through the doors to the Ohio Theatre.

Twenty-three actors made up the Great Lakes Theatre Festival troupe. They had actually been performing “Love’s Labor Lost” but were now QUITE enthusiastically preparing “Midsummer” for the Vampire Queen.

Mose could smell their fear-sharp sweat over the makeup and fresh-sawn timbers of the sets. They sat in a rough oval on stage, scripts trembling in hands. The director stood, his face completely wet in the overhead lights.

The audience was empty. Mose led Drusilla gently to the first row. “Well?” He shouted. The humans jumped, and at least two scripts fluttered to the floor. He smiled broadly. “Let’s see what you have.”

The director swallowed loudly. “We… come on, man, we just started.”

“You’ve done the play before. Just make sure Bottom is funny and Puck is lively and Drusilla here will be happy and you will be still alive for curtain call.”

The director fumbled with his script. “Right. Right. Places for act one.”

“But we never decided on blocking!”

“Just wing it. On book. Tommy, you signal curtain up.”

The stage hand glared at the director, knowing why he didn’t want to be at the front of the stage, closer to the vampires.

Drusilla clapped her hands. “I love plays! Will there be singing?”

***

Spike, Faith, Rona, Connie and Elisa walked up East 13th street from where they’d parked on Chester Avenue. Euclid Avenue was blocked off just prior to the theatres, thronged with police vehicles. “How are we even supposed to get in?” Elisa asked, craning her neck.

“The cops are lookin’ at us funny,” Connie muttered, rubbing her arms.

“Stare up and smile a lot – they’ll think we’re tourists,” Elisa said.

“Invite said 7:35.” Spike pointed at the large clock in front of the Windham Hotel. “We got a few minutes.”

“Spike, these guys aren’t going anywhere in a few minutes,” Rona said. “If they packed it in now, it’d take them until…”

A siren awakened like a startled cat. Cops scrambled to pull barriers aside and three vehicles sped off east.

The police blockade of Playhouse Square was dismantling itself in a hurry. Spike raised his eyebrows at Rona, and over the noise of squealing tires and running cops, said, “When Dru says she’ll get you in – she always gets you in.”

Then something large, dark, and screaming passed through the air. Everyone was silent for a moment, slayers, vampires, and cops, all looking up at the sky with apprehension.

“Come on,” Spike said cheerily and led the way up the sidewalk to the Palace Theatre’s gaily lit marquee.

“This is a trap,” Connie said. Still she walked forward, hands at her sides. “Just so you all know. A big, fat trap.”

“Like the ball wasn’t,” Elisa said. “Some of our best plans are traps.”

They pushed the brass and glass doors of the theatre, finding them open. A vampire ran quickly down a short flight of stairs to great them. “Mister Spike, you are expected, if you could…”

Faith stabbed him in the heart and he crumbled to dust, still gesturing to his right. “Bet you didn’t expect that,” she said. The back of her skull was tingling with the sense of vampires near, lots of them, and certainly there was a nice, uniformed crew watching her from the other side of the foyer. She wished she’d had more time to study the online map of this place (and that said map was more interested in getting you past ambush points than getting you to your numbered seat.)

“Rona, Connie, you go left. Spike, you cover our rear. Elisa with me. Anything moves, we stake it.” She started up the steps to the lobby proper.

And then Spike completely ignored her command and ran up the center of the steps, right into the line of waiting vampires.

Faith gritted her teeth and waved the women to keep to the plan. “Try to flank them. Maybe we’ll push them all into Spike and someone will take him out of our misery.”

The first few vampire ushers went down quickly, wheat before the scythe, but they were quickly retreating into the theatre itself and Spike had only made it up three rows before he stopped.

Every vampire in the place had a human in their arms. What was left of the musical cast and audience, held protectively and herded into the aisle, a living shield.

“Now is that sporting?” Spike asked, hands out, fingers wriggling as though they itched to grab and tear.

“No need to be sporting.” Mose boomed from the stage front. “Thanks for accepting our Queen’s invitation, Spike. She’s been anxious to see you.”

“Where’s Dru?”

“Hey,” Faith said, “Try to sound a little less like you’re rescuing her.”

Mose stepped aside and gestured behind him. Drusilla glided forward from the torn and mangled scenery, wearing a glittering gown and pink fairy wings. “My prince has come!”

“We’re here to save these people, pet,” Spike said, and glanced behind him at the four slayers he had as backup. “You can’t just take a whole theatre like this. You know that. It’s mad.”

Drusilla clasped her hands under chin and smiled in delight. “But the peacock and the lion have brought their masters to town, and all the ugly little coppers ran away!”

“Does she ever make sense?” Elisa whispered.

“You’re in a trap, little girl,” Drusilla said, and reached out one hand to grasp at the air in demonstration.

“I got that,” Rona muttered. Connie glared at Spike hard until he glanced her way.

“Allow me to explain,” Mose said proudly. He had a good orator’s voice and loved hearing himself echo off the fine woodwork. “This has all been foreseen. You will find that your exit is now completely blocked. We’re going to offer you a trade, and you’ll take it. One vampire for three hundred humans – is that how many we have left, Randy?”

“Three hundred thirty-five, sir.”

Mose held out his hands, palms up. “Three hundred and thirty-five. A very generous offer, isn’t it?”

Rona bit her lip and looked at Faith. “We can’t afford to turn that down,” she said.

Faith made no move, looking impassively forward, hands on her hips.

“I got four slayers with me, mate,” Spike said. “That’s like four atomic bombs. All you’ve got is a mess of people I don’t care about.”

“Liar,” said Drusilla. She repeated her little ‘trap’ motion.

Mose folded his hands. “We both know that isn’t true. A soul is a terrible thing, isn’t it? Makes you care even about these uncultured unfortunates.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Faith said. “We aren’t falling for it.” She turned her back to the stage. “Let’s get out of here.”

Vampire minions herded human survivors into the space before the doors. The ceiling was low under the balcony. Faith grabbed the light-fixture over her head and swung into the narrow space between the ceiling and the tops of the hostages' heads.

She landed and dispatched two vampires before the fighting even got serious. She expected the screams she heard in the background, victims being dispatched in retaliation. She expected that. She also expected her team to follow her. They didn’t.

“Faith! STOP!”

A hard grip grabbed her arm and pulled her back. She swung, stake halted just shy of a dark-clad chest by a hard grip. She glared at Spike.

“Stop,” he said, more quietly. The girls were behind him. The only sound was someone sobbing uncontrollably near the stage.

“We’re buggered,” Spike said. “If they want me, then they’re wasting good collateral. Let ‘em waste it.”

“Don’t be stupid!” She wrenched her arm free of his grip and pointed with her stake toward the stage. “They aren’t going to just let us all walk out of here!”

“Dru keeps her word,” Spike said. He walked toward the stage.

Faith leapt onto his back. “I’m in charge! I say stop!”

He stopped. They were just out from under the balcony, the brighter light of the chandeliers falling over them. He held still, not turning to her, just matching her pull to turn him with tensed muscle. “What are you going to do, slay me? Rona and Connie are on board with this. I’m giving myself up. You four make sure the hostages get away.”

She dropped from his back, seeing that she couldn’t force him to turn with mere strength. “We don’t do this. We don’t trade away parts of our team.”

“It’s my decision,” Spike said. He looked over his shoulder at her. “Or you gonna take this one away too?”

She stepped back as though struck and barely felt Elisa’s hand on her arm as she watched the crowd part to admit Spike a clear path to the stage.

Drusilla leaned down over the orchestra pit, arms open.

Spike didn’t look back. He kept his eyes steady on Drusilla. He came up to the low wall blocking off the orchestra. “Well, love,” he said. “Everyone gets to go now, right?”

He heard shifting and motion behind him, a few voices, he didn’t turn.

Mose smiled. “You made a good decision there, son. We made sure it was a generous offer.”

“Doesn’t always,” Drusilla said. “Poor boy. Doesn’t always do what the fates say. Come to mummy. There you are. Up!”

Spike stood his ground, arms crossed.

Dru frowned and turned to Mose.

“How do we know you’ll keep your word?” Mose stepped forward.

“I’ll keep my word,” Spike said, “because I’m looking Drusilla in the eye.”

Drusilla clapped her hands, her mouth making a happy little ‘oh’. Mose glanced up and nodded to the back of the hall. Doors opened and, with a surprisingly mundane shuffle and cough, the people filed out.

***

The slayers were quiet on their drive home. A thick quiet, laden with accusing looks. Whatever had flown through the air earlier that night, it was joined by others, and the sky itself seemed alive, glowing orange, green and yellow over downtown where the building’s lights reflected clouds low enough to obscure the top of the Terminal Tower. In the east, however, in the direction they drove, the light was pulsing teal, and bright enough to be a false sunrise.

When they were on familiar Cedar Road, and the trees blocked the glow, Connie dared to break the silence. “I don’t know what’s going on,” she said, staring steadily out the back window, “but I know we’ve screwed it up.”

“We did what we had to,” Elisa repeated from the passenger seat.

“It was his decision,” Faith said. “He HAD to go. He HAD to be the big hero.”

“Maybe not, eh?” Connie snapped. “Maybe he’s right where he wants to be and that was all a… a play. For us.”

“Spike wouldn’t do that,” Rona said quietly. “He died for us once. Died for me and Faith and a whole buncha others slayers. He closed the last fuckin’ hellmouth I had to live near.”

“I’ve about had it with hearing about…”

“HE WOULDN’T DO THAT.” Rona knelt up on the back seat, towering over Connie.

Silence rang in the car. Someone said “Sheesh.”

Faith pulled into their usual spot in front of the house. “We’ll wait,” she said. “Spike will get a message to us, if he can. If not… we go to ground. Right? We’ll tap our sources, we’ll start all over again.” She shook her keys, getting the house key to lie on top as she mounted the steps. She looked behind her at three very defeated faces. “We’ll find where the bitch lives, and we’ll get our boy back. She doesn’t know who she’s messing with.”

The door to the house burst open. “Where have you been!” Quasar stomped her fuzzy slippers. “No note? We have company.”

Faith didn’t even have time to ask, “company?”

Buffy stood in the doorway, hands on her hips, framed by the warm light of the living room. “Where’s my vampire?”


	8. Where Do We Go?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Massive Spike abuse this chapter. I know, it wasn't supposed to be that kind of fic, but I can't help myself - the boy suffers so prettily.
> 
> This chapter also a bit short (but the last one was long!) and exposition-heavy. Watch out for Arthur's dump! The Big Egg Restaurant was once real, but is now closed (by health inspection are we surprised?) so I can make fun of it all I want.
> 
> Yes, Arthur's note said to meet him at seven. He's been waiting a long, long time. Patient fellow!

Drusilla and Mose disappeared, walking the long way down from the stage to the audience. Spike didn’t move from his spot at the head of the aisle. He took it all as a compliment to his honor – that or a compliment to the minions guarding the entrance. He kept tabs on them, while trying not to LOOK like he was keeping tabs. Two exits at the back, a door by the stage that led fuck-knows-where, and the orchestra pit – had to be a way out through there if he jumped for it. He measured the distance and time with his eyes. Was everyone clear yet? The shuffling herd of humans was slowed up by the doorways to Euclid Avenue. He could just make out their number by noise.

The small door by the stage opened. “You came,” Drusilla said with open-eyed wonder. “My prince is back,” she reached for his face.

To his own surprise, Spike winced away from her touch. “No, pet. I’m your hostage this time, not your love.”

Drusilla curled her hand back as though it had been burned and began to whimper deep in her throat.

“It’s best not to upset her,” Mose said.

Spike gaped sarcastically. “Really?”

“Why did they have to take my daddy AND my prince and fill them with golden light? It’s not fair!”

Spike quickly took Dru’s hand in both of his. “No, it’s not fair.” He stroked her knuckles. “Pet, why did you go and do all this? Coulda had me come talk to you any day. Once upon a time, I’d have crawled over broken glass on my knees to talk with you. But not now, baby. It’s too late now, and you know that. You SAW it.” He cupped her cheek, drew her tear-streaked face up to look in her eyes. “You arrange all this just to kill me, love?”

She shook her head. “The stars told me. This time, I could have what I wanted.” She touched his cheek, and for a moment they were identical in their poses, in their unbelieving expressions.

“I know why you left, love,” he said. “I understand now. Woulda done the same. But this…?” He gestured up at the painted proscenium above them. “This isn’t you, pet. Ruling minions and battle plans. You should be somewhere beautiful and warm, somewhere you can dance under the stars without a care in your precious head.”

She blinked. “But I haven’t a care, my Spike. I have you!” She reached with both hands to caress his face. He winced away from the hard points of her fingernails, but she stepped forward, took hold of him, tiny sharp points all along his jaw. “Not yet, but I will. Have to get inside you. Drive the light away.”

He saw the look in her eyes, felt them drawing at his soul, and quickly looked away. “No love.”

She whimpered like a child denied candy.

“You don’t want to upset the lady,” Mose growled.

“Or you’ll what?” Spike shook his way out of Drusilla’s touch and glared at the large man. “All the collateral you had for my good behavior’s left the building. Gonna threaten to dust me? Good. Sooner I’m dust the sooner the slayers stop fussing about rescuing me and get on with the business of shutting you down.”

“Oh,” Mose said, “We didn’t let everyone go.”

Drusilla twisted, her hands behind her back, smiling like a truant schoolgirl.

“I don’t care,” Spike said, not even convincing himself.

Mose walked up the aisle, raising his head. “Did Childs get the Shakespeare company all squared away?”

“They’re ready for transport, Mr. Mose. We have the back entrance secured for your departure.”

“Spike,” Drusilla sing-songed, swaying as she advanced. “Save the pretty little actors.”

He met her gaze pleadingly. “Why are you doing this?”

“Because I can,” she said, fingernails again sliding along his jaw.

He gazed steadily into her eyes. Black pools. He felt the water rise around him, the world slip away, thoughts slip away. It was a relief. He didn’t even have the thought to be ashamed at setting his burdens down, giving in, falling into the starless sky of Dru’s eyes.

Drusilla hummed happily, taking a step back and caressing Spike’s cheek. He stared without seeing, a slight smile on his slack lips.

“That never fails to creep me out,” Mose said.

One of his lieutenants came up to him and bowed. “The police blockade is greatly reduced, my lord, and we have slain all those at the rear entrance. We should go now before reinforcements arrive.”

Mose nodded. “Come, my queen. I don’t know how you managed it, but we’re getting away. Bring your toy, now.”

Drusilla gave him a winning smile. She wrapped an arm around Spike’s neck and licked a tiny trickle of blood from his cheek where she’d scratched him. Then she moved to his lips, licking and nipping at him while he swayed slightly in reaction to her motion, unresisting and unresponsive.

“Come on,” Mose gathered up Drusilla’s discarded shawl and reached for her elbow. “No time to waste, Majesty.”

Drusilla drew Spike along as Mose drew her. “He’s not golden inside now,” Drusilla said, stroking his arm and smiling up at his passive face. “He’s perfect. Like a doll. All those thoughts and conscience balled up and squirming like a little kitten at the back of my brain.” She giggled as though it tickled her and ran a wriggling hand over the back of her head.

“Yes, but how long can you keep him like that?”

They walked through a grungy back hallway toward the loading docks. Drusilla never took her eyes from Spike. “A time and a time. Just have to make sure he hates it when his mind is back.” She kissed his cheek. “And he’ll hate it. Poor Spike. Until he’s all hollowed out and mine again.”

***

The Big Egg All-Night Restaurant squatted in a dirty corner of the near-west side just over the Detroit-Superior Bridge from Public Square. A giant fabric egg, lit from the inside, grew like a cancer from the yellow-ish awning lest anyone miss the giant red letters announcing the restaurant’s name.

“Eeew. I don’t want my shoes to touch that floor,” Quasar said, eyeing the mottled linoleum from the safety of the sidewalk.

“Well, they’re going to.” Buffy grimaced, thinking of her own suede boots – should have known better than to dress up to meet Spike. “Now move! I want to see this Arthur person NOW.”

“Back off, B. He’s not going anywhere.” Faith walked around them and pushed her way through the door without hesitation.

Arthur sat alone in a big booth near the back of the nicotine-stained interior. He stood out from the battered and tattooed patrons in his black business suit. He stood and waved to them.

He bowed a little as they approached, one hand on his stomach to keep his suit neat. “Thank you, ladies, so much for coming on short notice. I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure…?” He gestured to Buffy.

“Can it beard-face,” Buffy said, and winced at her own poor excuse for an insult. She shook her head and tried to start over, “We need to know where Drusilla has taken Spike.”

Arthur looked at Quasar and then Faith. “I didn’t know he’d been taken.”

“Right. He’s useless.” Buffy turned on her heel. “Let’s go back to the theatre. Maybe there’s something we missed.”

“Wait!” Arthur scrambled to catch Buffy in the narrow aisle way between the booths and the bar.

She looked down at his hand on her arm and then up at him with a raised eyebrow. “You REALLY want to move that.”

He hastily let go. “I can help you. In fact, I’m certain you NEED my help. An old one has awakened.”

“Oh God,” Quasar said, “We did NOT just turn Lovecraft.”

Arthur stepped backward, toward the booth. “Please. Sit down. We have to talk.”

Faith shrugged and dropped into the orange vinyl booth. “We got nowhere better. Spill, Art. Town’s going more to hell than usual and I’m betting you’re the man with the plan.”

“Certainly isn’t you,” Buffy muttered, crossing her arms and standing near at hand, but not deigning to sit down.

“Hey! How many ways was I supposed to try and stop the suicidal vamp? I said no to going to the theatre. I said no to the exchange. Hell, I tried to drag his sorry white ass out of there!”

Quasar sat on the very edge of the seat. “Let’s not fight, please?”

Arthur resumed his seat, smoothing down the front of his jacket. “On the night of the solstice – the shortest night of the year – if the leader of the Eastern Clans meets and acknowledges the leader of the Western Clans on the hell mouth, the old one can awaken. I arranged it. I did it well and artfully. They were supposed to lift my curse.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Buffy demanded.

“Hush, B. Not so nasty,” Faith said. She turned to Arthur. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Arthur flipped his hands palm-up. “None of you noticed that an elder god of the demon world has awakened?”

“Didn’t breech the radar like Spike getting vamp-napped,” Faith said. “We’re kinda into our own.”

“I can help you get him back. I can help you defeat the old one. But you have to do something for me. End my curse.”

“Is your curse living? Because I can so end that,” Buffy said.

“Hey!” A burly, tattooed waitress pushed her way past Buffy. “Yous guys going to order or what?”

Without glancing at the waitress (or the stained, plastic-coated menu) Arthur said, “Bring me a Big Egg and a coke. Ladies?”

“I am SO not eating here,” Quasar said.

“I find they can’t screw up pop,” Arthur advised. “There’s little rainbows on the top of the glass, but Coke’ll kill anything.”

“Yeah, gimmie that Big Egg thing,” Faith said, turning over a menu. “That has cheese on it, right?”

Buffy bit her lip and waited for the waitress to leave. “Why did you pick this place?”

“That’s really not the most useful question you could ask me. But if you must know, it’s because I actually like a plate of artificial scrambled eggs with artificial cheese now and again. And demons never come here. They don’t like the smell.”

“I must be part demon,” Quasar said quietly.

“Not that I’m not thrilled to be eating eggs at 3 in the morning,” Faith said, “But let’s cut to the part where you help us get vamp-boy back and whatever the fuck is happening in East Cleveland gone.”

“The curse first. And then the old one,” Arthur said. “Your friend will have to wait. My seers say he’s in no danger. Drusilla wants him alive.”

This, which was meant to be good news, caused the slayer’s frowns to darken. “What do we gotta do?” Faith said.

“Retrieve an artifact for me. And cast a spell. That’s it. You’ll be saving thousands of lives.”

“And we should trust you because?” Buffy asked.

“I need you. You need me. I don’t see what’s so difficult to understand in that.”

“We don’t need you,” Faith said. “We got plans and fists a-plenty.”

“You don’t know what you’re dealing with!” Arthur looked genuinely shocked. “Don’t the words ‘elder god’ cause a little concern with you people?”

Faith shrugged. “Buff’s beaten a god before.”

“I… had help,” Buffy said, looking away.

“Well, I’m more sure than ever I’ve picked the right team to back. Sit down, please, Miss Buffy. I have a tale to tell you.”

The waitress came back, balancing large plates of florescent yellow eggs and Buffy reluctantly pushed Quasar over so she could join her in the booth.

When the plates had been arranged – did eggs and cheese really come in that color? - Arthur hunched forward over his and began telling his tale.

“The Vampires aren’t the only power in Cleveland. Warlocks have been here since before Grover Cleveland was born. Some say they brought the hellmouth, like germs bring canker sores.”

“Do we need all the backstory?” Quasar asked.

“You’re going to want it,” Arthur said. “Believe me. Because they’re human, the warlocks always considered themselves the enemies of the vampires. Funny thing, I used to be one of them, and I learned pretty quickly the vampires hardly notice we exist. There’s… really more there than you need to know. Falling out. I left. A curse was placed on me keeping me from ever returning to my home. But the warlocks, they wanted to raise this god. Bringer of the Color, or whatever his name is, he’s supposed to make them all-powerful. I guess they haven’t read much horror or they’d know the loyal minions who raise the all-powerful god usually are the first to be eaten. Still, to be rid of my curse, I agreed to help them. It was really beautiful too. I had to raise a vampire from the dead, which is not easy, let me tell you, perform a couple of rituals, but I got your boy Spike to be the titular head of the west-side clans. He didn’t even know it when he met the East-side master at my party. Every vampire eye was on the legendary couple, too, all perfectly distracted, as requested. The magi, they fear vampires. They’re resistant to magic. Resistant in the ‘I want to kill you slowly for daring to cast something on me’ way. I’m the only mage ever left the circle, ever to gain business contacts with the undead. They needed me to do the job, and I needed my curse lifted.”

Again, Quasar spoke, “So… long story short, this is all your fault?”

“They didn’t lift the curse!” Arthur smacked the table. “I told them to do it first, that they’d need me when they did the ritual… but they obviously didn’t, because now every phone number I have in East Cleveland is dead, and every email goes un-answered. They’ve gotten themselves killed, and the god is released, and I’m the only one who can contain it and I. Can’t. Cross. The river.” He punctuated his words with frustrated slaps of the worn Formica. “I need you to be my hands. Everything’s on the east side, including the hellmouth itself.”

Buffy shook her head. “All this still depends on us trusting you. And I don’t see Drusilla’s dusty death on the playlist.”

“This god will infect people at an exponential rate. It takes them over, lives like a virus. Those it can't control it drives mad. In a week the city will be lost! Once you get me the artifacts and help perform the ritual, I’ll take you directly to Drusilla’s hideout. I’ve known all about it all along.”

He raised his eyebrows, daring the slayer to smack him, her intent clear in her eyes and her slightly raised hand.

“Give us something,” Faith said. She poked her fork in her half-eaten pile of runny eggs. “A hostage. A secret. You gotta give us something to show your good faith.”

Arthur bit his lip in thought. “I could give you the Windermere Magi.” He glanced from one slayer to another. “However many of them are left.”

***

Spike awoke to burning pain in his back, and a strange, hollow crunching sound. Something pulled on his ribs from behind. A man should not know exactly where his ribs are like that. He struggled to see. He was on his stomach. His hands were bound in front of him, his arms partially blocking any view he could have, but something large and heavy was being manipulated above him, something… feathered?

A large wing-tip stroked his left arm and then swung out of view again while Spike felt his scapula wrenched out of place. He cried out then, unable to stop himself. There was a distinctive sound, and feeling, of bone scraping against bone.

“He’s awake, Highness,” said someone behind him, grunting with effort. Whoever it was sat straddling his buttocks. Spike felt the lesser pain of his pelvis grinding into the table.

“How is my angel-spike?” Drusilla clapped. Spike craned his neck up and saw her leaning over the edge of the table. Her silken hair fell onto his bound hands.

Behind him, a drill started.

“Dru… what are you doing to me?”

“You wanted to be an angel, Spike. I’m making you one.”

He felt his scapula, and by extension every bone in the top-right quadrant of his body, vibrating with the drill, which whined wetly and then, with a wrenching stab – broke through. Every muscle in his shoulder was torn, twisted. He howled.

“Does my angel-spike want the pain to stop?”

When he could speak again, he gasped, “Be nice. Yeah.”

Cool fingers pried his face up from the tear-wet wood. “Be in me, love, fall into me, and the pain won’t matter.”

Gratefully, he raised his head, and felt himself fall into her eyes as a sweet oblivion. Deep stone wells, with autumn leaves lying on the surface, unmoving.

Drusilla hummed a soothing song, stroking his hair with one hand as she watched the pale flesh of his back drawn closed, pulled with zig-zags of thread against the base of Blue Heron’s wings.


	9. Our Vampire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a while for an update on this one. I blame the plot getting all convolute-y. Next chapter I hope to get all the slayers back together in one place again.

Quasar adjusted her shoulder bag, not looking at Buffy as she locked the car. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“About what? Scary mage house. We go in, find things, kill them.” Buffy glanced down the street. The sky was almost daytime-bright with its teal glow cutting sharp shadows against the trees and streetlights, rendering the run-down Victorian mansions of East Cleveland into something majestic and ethereal.

“About Spike,” Quasar said in an earnest whisper, every bit as though they were high school girls gossiping between classes and likely to be overheard. “You called him YOUR vampire.”

Buffy strode toward the mansion in front of them, scowling. “Apocalypse first,” she said, adding bitterly to herself, “isn’t that always the case?”

It was an impressive place, once upon a time, big wooden lions flanking its wide front steps, but air conditioners hung out of the upper story windows and mail boxes mingled with the bolts and fasteners of their removed brethren beside the steel-grilled door.

Quasar’s heels clacked quickly across the sidewalk, echoing in the strangely quiet night. “It’s not good to keep things bottled up, hon, and I can tell you have a lot to say. You know, Faith…”

“Is why we’re in this mess,” Buffy snapped, ripping the security gate open with pure strength.

Quasar stomped her heels on the front step, but her protest went unheard by the senior slayer, who was already poking her head into the front hallway of Magi central. Well, her momma didn’t raise a rude girl. Quasar followed dutifully. “You know, for a woman who just showed up out of the blue, you sure act like you know everything that’s going on here. And as for Spike being YOUR vampire…”

Buffy shushed her, holding up a hand. “I think I heard…”

With a strangled cry of rage, a man in a loose brown bathrobe ran down the stairs at them, his eyes glowing in the low light.

***

Faith stayed behind as the other two slayers left the late-night diner. She stood impassive in front of Arthur as he paid his check.

“Okay,” he said, “I’m beginning to feel like something is expected here. Did you sneeze and I forgot to bless you?”

She tossed her head back to get the hanging hair out of her eyes. “Like I said to Buffy, think you need an escort home, hoss. This neighborhood’s shit.”

Arthur tucked his receipt into his wallet and straightened his jacket with an almost affected level of primness. “I live in walking distance from here, actually, and I never have problems. I DID mention I’m a warlock?”

“Well, super-human bodyguard can’t suck, even for a magic freak,” Faith said, casually slipping her arm between his and his body and yanking him out of the restaurant. “Where to?”

He looked worried, but lifted his cane and pointed. “That way.”

She paused long enough to crane her head up and down the street. “Figures you’d live in the shitty direction.”

“It gets better.”

Faith made a noncommittal noise and strode off with such a strong pace that Arthur, though he was an inch taller, found it difficult to keep up.

“Really. We turn at the end of the block, go over a bridge, under another, and it becomes nothing but urban gentrification with ugly modern condominiums.”

“Mm-hm,” Faith said, her attention on the street around them, not Arthur.

He became increasingly worried she was looking for witnesses. The street they were walking down was still pretty active, even this late at night. The summer nights were cool and pleasant, so the homeless were out on the park benches and bus stops. A few late-shift workers were walking home from bus stops, too.

Up ahead was an all-night market, a haven of Technicolor behind its chain-link barred windows. They would turn there, onto Abby Road, and then there was the long bridge over the railroad tracks… the long, featureless bridge that would end under the freeway bridge, where the streetlights were few and no one could be expected to be walking.

Arthur stopped. Faith jerked him forward another pace by sheer strength, but stopped when he stubbornly dug his heels into the sidewalk and wouldn’t spare her dignity.

“What?” she asked.

“I’m not entirely sure I can trust you,” he said, jerking down his rumpled sleeve.

She rolled her eyes. “I’m not going to roll you, Gieves. Just walkin’ you home. Friendly neighborhood slayer.”

“It’s not far from here I can make it on my own.” Very stiffly, he added, “Thank you.”

Faith sighed and knocked her fists together. “You want to do this here? Fine. We’ll do it here.” She wrapped her fists in his lapels and pulled him up, onto his tiptoes.

“Damn.” He flailed, dropping his cane and grabbing on to her forearms. They felt like steel rods. “You… you slayers are really, really strong.”

“Cut the bullshit, aright?” She shook him once, glaring up at him. “You tell us you know where Spike is, and we’re just going to leave him there until, what? We avoid some apocalypse only YOU know about? What, you think I’m stupid?”

“He’s safe! I had seers look into it! More than one! All the auguries…”

“I don’t give a crap about auguries. I left one of my team back there and you say you know where he is. Explain to me how any other facts enter into this.”

He patted her arm, looking cute with his face scrunched down into his collar by the force of being held up by his clothing. “Put… put me down? We’ll talk?”

Faith smiled slowly. “Okay.” She dropped him and took a step back, eyebrow raised.

Arthur took more time than necessary checking himself (and his clothes) for damage, but when he was done he smiled. “Well, since having people around doesn’t seem to dissuade you, we may as well continue on to the unpopulated, easily muggable leg of the journey.”

Faith followed him as he turned the corner and passed the all-night convenience store. “I’m not hearing talking. And this had better not be a real long walk. We’ve wasted enough time.”

“Check with your watchers about the Old One. They’ll back me up. It’s bound to have made news outside of Cleveland by now. With any luck, your friends are also gathering solid evidence as we speak. The ritual… ow!”

He hopped on one leg, grabbing his calf where a sudden, stinging pain had hit. He looked around him and his eyes widened as he saw a white pebble sitting innocently on the sidewalk beside him.

“How about, instead of taking you home, HOSS, we go to this hideout of Drusilla’s you claim to know about?” Faith tossed a larger pebble in her hand, feeling its weight and smiling.

“I told you… after the old one is defeated. It won’t do you any good…”

“Seems to me we’re just wasting time talking. You got some warlock magic trumps super-strong? Or am I just not intimidating enough?” She shrugged. “I haven’t been practicing, you know, since I did time for manslaughter.”

Arthur licked his lips and held out one hand, “Oh, you’re intimidating. Never deny that you are. A beautiful woman…”

“Where is it? Or do we read about a tragic beating in tomorrow’s paper?” She tossed her head back, as though reading words in the streetlights, “Local character tragically beaten just blocks from his stylish Tremont home. No suspects.”

“This is crazy. You need me to do the ritual. To save the world!”

She backed him down the sidewalk. “And all you have to do is say a few words. Where. Is he?”

“No. That’s my assurance…” He looked anxiously behind him, but there was no traffic on the back streets at this time of the morning. He held his walking-stick in front of him as a shield.

“Like the Slayers aren’t going to help save the world.”

“I know you only by reputation, Faith, and it’s a storied one. Spike is safe. I told you that.”

“You told us a lot of things. How can I trust you?”

Arthur stopped backing up. Faith had to halt before bumping in to him. His black eyes met hers, twinkling in the sodium light. “I’ll show you,” he said.

“Show me?” She turned and whipped her stone into the side of an earby building. There was the sound of brick flaking at the impact.

Arthur winced. “In my apartment. I can show you the visions that were shown to me. I’ll show you your vampire.”

Slowly, Faith nodded, accepting this. Arthur relaxed. He hated turning his back on the woman, but did. They started across the long bridge over the railroad tracks and Scranton Road. Ahead the freeway loomed like a vast cavern, street-light stars glittering above it.

Behind him, Faith said, “He’s not my vampire.” Very softly, and with a tint of uncertainty that Arthur carefully noted, she added, “He’s not anybody’s.”

***

“Not back yet?” Elisa hugged her bathrobe around her as she walked down the steps into the living room. Rona sat on the couch, sorting stakes and weapons.

“Nope,” she said, and looked up, the street light playing across her face in a watery streak. “Not a peep. And we got orders.”

“Council?”

“Who else?” She jammed a stake into her purse. “Yeah, like we needed some geezers in England to tell us something’s up. They sent us a map. Epicenter of the wrong.” She picked up a paper and waved it at Elisa.

It was a print out from Google Maps. Elisa frowned. “There’s no address. This is a street intersection.”

“Yeah, they say the wrong is centered somewhere within four blocks of that spot. Have I mentioned how useful I think the Council of Watchers are?” She took the paper back. “They want us to go, ASAP. Canvas the area and find the sigil – the source of this god’s power. Doesn’t that sound like the sort of plan you’d come up with if YOU weren’t the one going?”

Elisa bit her lip, looking over the array of weapons on the coffee table. “You were going to head out alone.”

“I sure as hell didn’t expect you to wake up, but I’m not going to complain if you come along.”

Elisa ran a hand through her hair. “Give me ten minutes. I’ll get dressed and see if Connie’s up to coming too.”

“Fine. This isn’t me trying to go down in a blaze of glory. This is me just trying to get the stupid job done.” Another stake slammed into the purse with a wooden clack. “The more the fuckin’ merrier. We should leave a note for Queen B when she gets back.”

Elisa stopped at the base of the stairs. “We’re all worried, Rona. Me, too. We’ll get him back.”

“This isn’t about that bloodsucker, either. Told him. Driest damn eyes on the bus.” Rona glared down at the coffee table as though daring it to make her cry. Elisa crept up the steps carefully to keep them from creaking.

"Selfish bitch," she heard Rona say, but she wasn't sure who she was referring to. Elisa? Faith? Buffy? Maybe even herself.

***

Spike didn’t regain consciousness so much as struggle valiantly against it and lose. He faced a wall – faded rose plaster with flaking gold wainscoting. His arms were numb, thankfully, but the sharp feeling of wires digging through flesh, pulling with weight, told him his taxidermy was still in place. That and the shadow - it took him a while to realize it was his, all blobby on top like that.

“Dru?” he asked, voice coming out weak. He coughed and tried a little louder, “Drusilla?”

He was swinging a little. Right. Get the bearings. Perhaps his mad princess had already grown tired of torture-the-Spike. He could be abandoned, free to, well, get free.

Trying to rotate awoke feeling in his arms. That was… not good. Burning al brand new as partially healed flesh broke against wires and springs. There was light coming from behind him, though, and a steady thrum of noise, so he forced himself to keep twisting until the wall that had been in front of him was behind him.

He had definitely not expected to be in a storefront.

Green blinds covered a picture window and two side-windows bowed out and trimmed in brass. The door was old-fashioned, also bearing a green blind. Three numbers in gold could be seen, backwards, on the glass transept above it. 351. Well. That explained the steady noise, like a waterfall beset upon by geese – he was in some kind of shopping area, in a closed-down storefront. Thankfully the sun wasn’t creeping in around the window-shades.

“Well, goody on me,” Spike muttered and tried to see how high he could raise his legs. Even taking away the minor support from his toes touching the ground was agony. He could HEAR the wires straining against bone in his back. His ankles were cuffed together, a short chain from them led to an eye-bolt in the floor.

His vision wavered, he stopped all motion, panting out the pain until he could gingerly maneuver to look at the bolt, and the floor. Cheap tile made to look like wood parquet. If 351 meant he was on a third floor, well, it wasn’t likely to be concrete under that, right? He closed his eyes and tried to determine if the steady thrum of noise was mostly on level with him or below. He tilted his head. Maybe, he thought. It was hard to be sure.

Right. Well, what did he have to loose? He wrapped his wrists as much as he could around the chains above him, tensed his stomach and took three extra-large breaths.

The first attempt to yank the bolt out of the floor resulted only in an impotent scream and tunnel-vision.

He panted, struggling to get back into his starting position, to not feel the pain – you had to not worry about that. For this sort of crap plan to work you had to not care how you hurt yourself, so long as the end result was continued life.

His toes scraped along the cheap tile on either side of the little ring bolt. He toe-walked, sort of waddled until he was taut against the ceiling chain, behind the bolt – hoping to get a little extra momentum this time and really yank the sucker out. He stared at the sliver of light at the bottom of the window-shade and counted to three.

He jerked his knees up to his chest this time with a gutteral cry. The eye-bolt hit the window-shade in the largest section of window and, thanks to the shade being a few inches from the window itself, fell harmlessly to the floor, its impact reduced to just noise and not glass-shattering force.

Not that Spike was awake to appreciate it, hanging loose in his chains as he had been before, twisting slowly back to his starting position facing the back wall of the abandoned shop on the third floor of the Old Arcade.

Christine Williams, owner of Lady Chatterly’s Vintage Clothing, did her very best not to flinch at the sounds coming from next door, and when her customer looked worriedly at the left wall, she blinked and said, “What?”

“I thought I heard something,” the goth girl said curling the evening gloves she’d been looking at up against her chin.

“There’s a steam-junction next door. You get used to it,” Christine said. “Shall I ring those up?”

“Sounded like a wounded animal,” the girl pressed. “I mean… didn’t you hear that?”

“Oh, honey, these old buildings. Sometimes it sounds like train whistles, sometimes moans and screams. You get why people think the place is haunted. Since you like that pair so much, I’ll mark it down to five, okay? Would you like them in a bag?”

There was a roar and the umistakable sound of a chain breaking. The customer dropped the gloves altogether and Christine cursed under her breath.

“Wait,” she grabbed the girl’s wrist. “It’s okay. You’ll get my neighbor in trouble. He brought his pit-bull in with him. Poor thing needs to go to the vet and he couldn’t get time off.”

The girl didn’t look like she was buying it, and she yanked her hand anxiously, eyes growing wider as she realized how strong the thin little shop-keeper was.

Christine let go with a sigh and watched the girl flee, ringing the little bell over the door as she ran out into the arcade.

She put the gloves back in the bin and sighed, smoothing the kid-leather. There had almost been a five buck sale she wouldn’t see again that day. And she’d paid nearly eight dollars for the gloves, new, back in 1956. And that was a lot, back then. (Still, there were advantages to being a vampire in the vintage clothing industry. She had basically dealt in nothing but her own cast-offs for almost the first four years of owning the shop. Nowadays, though, she had to buy, and hunt down victims with old-fashioned taste.)

She picked up the phone and pressed a speed-dial button. “Randy? Chris. He’s awake. Scared off a customer too. YES, I get customers. Just tell Mose. Fine, tell Larry. Someone has to come down here and keep an eye, I have a business to run and if he escapes because I’m with a customer… oh! Don’t you take that tone with me!”

She dropped the phone into its cradle. “Fine,” she said, to the no one in her shop. “He’s not MY prisoner.”


	10. In the Light

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feeling pretty good about this chappie, and not just because I have finally achieved one of my primary goals for this fiction: getting a scene to take place in The Old Arcade.
> 
> [Here's a picture of the Arcade](http://clients.teksavvy.com/~wryit/wryit/Hyatt_Arcade.jpg) looking from just above the news stand by the the Euclid Ave. entrance north toward the Superior Avenue entrance. *sigh* I wish the picture did the place justice. You come to Cleveland, I'll take you to the Arcade, kay?

Drusilla raised her arms overhead, tracing the paths made by sparrows flitting between the support-posts of the Old Arcade. High above sunlight filtered through old, translucent glass, beams cutting through the walkways and storefronts just inches from her fingers. The light, the birds, and the antique opulence made the place feel an oasis, not just from the grimy downtown of Cleveland, but from this world itself. Drusilla's arms started to cross shaddows from hanging plants and drift close to the dust-speckled rays of light. Mose wondered if Drusilla truly had forgotten the sun was dangerous, or trusted herself that much not to cross the delicate boundaries of shadow.

Either way, he took hold of her elbow and guided her closer to the shop fronts and away from the deadly light.

The minions were strolling along as close to the walls as they could get, gawking like tourists at the Rose Parade.

“It’s like home,” Dru said, running a hand over a pilaster. “Old and broken.”

“Glad you like it, my queen. You’ll like how we hung your boy up. He’s just a few more shops ahead.” Many of the third floor shops were vacant, the lunchtime crowds of downtown employees not quite enough to support a whole shopping center in a city where commerce looked outward, leaving the downtown a sort of preserved whole decorated for days before automobiles. Below it was early enough that only a few people walked the mosaic-tiled floors, mostly going to the convenience store near the back and the coffee and news stand under the stairs at the south end.

They passed Lady Chatterly’s Vintage and Christine gave him a nodding sort of salute from behind her counter. Drusilla lingered with her eyes on a velvet cloche. He’d have to come back and get that for her.

Noises were coming from shop 351 at the end of the row. Mose frowned and motioned one of the minions to go in first.

Said minion rolled her eyes and gave a long-suffering sigh. Minions should know they’re minions, damn it. Mose lowered his chin and raised his eyebrows, usually all the intimidation he had to exert. She opened the shop door and immediately dodged a kick.

Spike swung haphazardly around the room like a batted tetherball. Long lines of blood traced the low points of his physique from his battered wrists on down. The ridiculous taxidermy wings (who could refuse Dru such a whimsy?) seemed to flap as he contorted, trying to get his legs up for another kick.

Mose pushed the cringing minion out of his way and clocked the swinging vampire, catching him on the return swing and sending him hard left. Spike twisted in his chains, grinning manically as he licked blood from his lips.

“And here I thought Drusilla was the insane one in the family,” Mose said, wiping his knuckles on his sleeve. “Randy? Get your boys in here and stop this idiot.”

“Yeah, Randy. Come get your ass kicked.” Spike was panting, dancing a little on his toes, body strained taut from ceiling to floor, hands wrapped around the chains over his head, arms flexed, ready to fight.

“I can’t see!” Drusilla bounced, trying to get a glimpse over Mose’s considerable bulk. “Did we do it all wrong? Spike? Aren’t you happy, my little angel?”

“Can’t talk, Dru. Busy.”

“We’ll talk soon,” Mose said, calmly adjusting his shirt-cuffs, which had ridden up when he’d punched Spike.

Mose’s minions filed into the small room, lining the walls.

“Right,” Spike twisted, taking stock of each vampire in turn. “Gonna come at me one at a time, nice and sporting?”

“We don’t have to,” Mose reached back and took Drusilla’s fingertips, drawing her into the room like leading a debutant onto a dance floor.

Spike spat a little extra blood. “Pet, don’t come closer, I won’t let you.”

Drusilla tilted her head in non-comprehension, still smiling.

“Come now,” Mose said, “You can’t possibly expect to stage some miraculous escape? You’re barely standing.”

“This isn’t about escape,” Spike smiled. “It’s just fun. First person stupid enough to step forward gets a face full of boot. Everyone else gets to know they’re a coward.”

“Then I’ll be the coward.” Mose motioned, “Jax, Sarah, Reese – get him.”

***

Arthur stood in front of his large-screen television, fussing with an old VCR. “This thing gets funky, but you need to have the player blessed by a priestess and I just haven’t had contact info for the DVD…”

Faith stood behind the sofa, which was a walkway area in the apartment, her arms crossed over her chest, ignoring all of Arthur’s wife’s attempts at offering her refreshment or small talk. “You’re going to show me mystical visions on your VCR?”

“BLESSED,” Arthur smirked. “It’s a blessed VCR. Honey, the slayer doesn’t want anything, why don’t you just go to bed?”

Janine set down her tray of sodas and crossed her arms, assuming a pose very similar to Faith’s. “I think I’ll just stay up until our guest leaves, Art.”

Faith’s mouth quirked up at one corner as she took in a challenging stare from the other woman. “Man, why is it only the evil guys commit?”

“Here we are,” Arthur said, stepping back. “The visions of the Whiskey Island Oracle.”

The salt-and-pepper fuzz of the screen didn’t clear so much as coalesce, a pattern forming in the black speckles, like ants swarming over hidden traces of sugar water. The swarming shapes joined, and then, before she knew it, Faith was looking at a face – goatee and shades well defined in black, the rest fading into fuzz.

An insect-buzzing voice spoke as ghostly lips moved. “Recording. One two. Recording. These visions recorded live, June 20, 6:15 pm, by request of Magus Arthur. Listen, kiddies, to what the oracle has to say – he don’t like repeating himself.”

“This is supposed to convince me…?”

“Just wait.” Arthur held up a hand.

The ghost face turned to the side, looking down briefly. “You ask about the color, the mages, and the river, but there’s nothing I can tell you about those, Art, buddy, not that will help you. What’s going to help you is knowing about the vampires, and the slayers. You think you have problems with five slayers in town? Hooo boy are you in for a treat come the end of July. Slayer number one’s going to drop in, and she’s going to be out for your blood, friend.” A ghostly hand materialized, warding off questions. “Not anything you do – but the slayers have a vampire pet of their own. Good guy vamp. That’s an exclusive club. He gets captured by the queen – tell the super-girlfriends he’ll be okay. He survives. You got to keep them from getting nuts over him, dig? He’s cool. They go after him, there’ll be no time to do what really needs done. Now, another thing you CAN affect…”

Arthur jabbed the ‘off’ button. Faith raised an eyebrow, “Oh so fast to stop me from hearing what’s next? What, you think I ain’t never seen a con before?” She rolled on the balls of her feet. “Play the whole tape. Let’s see the parts you didn’t prepare just for me, spanky!”

“This is legitimate, madam slayer.” Arthur waved his hand at the VCR. “June 20th, and he predicted your Buffy’s arrival.”

“I only got your word this tape’s really that old. Could be you and photoshop.”

“It’s real,” Janine said. “Art got that tape over a month ago.”

“Oh! There’s an unbiased second opinion!”

Arthur flipped open the VCR and tossed the tape to Faith. “Fine. Take it home. Check it out.”

She turned the tape over in her hands twice, wondering what was so odd about it, then she saw – there was no tape inside the cassette box. It was light, empty, and slightly… glowing.

Faith shook her head and tossed it back. “Okay, sport, I’ll say YOU believe this is a real prophecy. What is it you want us to do?”

“I said…”

“You said crap.”

Arthur blinked, stunned by Faith’s speed as she advanced on him and took a fistful of shirt (and chest hair). He glanced to his wife, who was frozen reaching for him, unsure if she should (or could) intervene.

“What do you want me to say, Faith? Do you want the truth or do you want me to say what I think will stop you from mauling me?”

Faith let his shirt go with an indifferent shrug. “Intimidation works for me, what can I say?”

“I told you and your slaying colleagues the truth. I need two artifacts collected – the Scroll of Laibach and an ancient Erie fetish. What more can you ask of me?”

“And yet I’m still standing here.” Faith examined her nails.

“The scroll is in Wade Chapel. The fetish is hanging on the wall in the Beachland Tavern. I can give you directions to both. Bring these objects to me, help me perform one simple ritual, and your vampire, and your city, will be safe.”

“Now we’re talkin’, Art. Line me up those maps and let’s go shopping!”

***

Elisa, Connie and Rona had to walk to East Cleveland, their car being AWOL since the trip Quasar, Buffy and Faith had taken to The Big Egg the night before.

Elisa walked point with her cell phone at her ear. “They really should be done by now,” she shook her head as Quasar’s number transferred to voicemail yet again. “You have a number for Buffy? Faith’s cell is off.”

The other two slayers were quiet, following her at a distance and a little apart, down the wide service road through Lakeview Cemetery. Connie watched Rona’s stoic face for a few paces before shaking her head. “No. Big boss never gave us contact info.”

“Even if someone answered now, they wouldn’t reach us before we made it to the target,” Elisa sighed, pocketing her phone. She tossed a glance over her shoulder, took in the stony face to her left and the unsure one to her right. The strange light that hung overhead cast tree-shadows over them in violet and teal, giving Elisa the uneasy feeling that they were somehow walking through a vast aquarium. It could have been dusk or dawn or high noon, the light was just plain wrong. “Do we have a plan, Rona? Any idea what this ‘sigil’ thing looks like?”

“Like a sigil,” Rona said, lips pressing tight. “Watchers think we’ll know it when we see it.” She peered into the trees with narrowed eyes, the marble tombs painted with strange blues in the unnatural light.

That was when the first of the crazies attacked.

***

“Oh my poor Spike. That wasn’t nice at all, turning off your lamps – pst pst pst!”

Spike blinked and shook away wooly sleep to see Drusilla make little candle-snuffing motions with her fingertips. His head was in her lap. Oh, hell no. He struggled to get up, and a coat-hanger hooked him in the spine – no, wait, that was the bloody wings. He still had them, only now Dru was half kneeling on one and he wriggled like a butterfly pinned to a matte board. “Damn it, Dru… lemme up!”

She cooed and leaned close, stroking his face. He turned his eyes away, and when she tracked them, shut them. She hissed and clawed his cheek.

“Not happening, love. No more trips to the starless sky for me today.” He gritted his teeth as an attempt to move his arms proved them to be dislocated, in agony, and bloody well not moving. “Just… let me up.”

“Sh, shush,” Drusilla petted his head harshly, smearing his own blood over his hair. “Look, Spike, see? I’ve arranged a pretty thing for you. Look at it, please?”

She scooted back and lifted him with all the unnatural strength that imbued her superficially delicate features. Spike warred against curiosity, sure this was a trick to get him to look into her eyes again – but Dru was behind him, holding him up, stroking those ridiculous wings.

He opened his eyes. They were sitting in the picture window of the little shop, looking out at brass railings – a facing array of storefronts and columns glittering in sunshine.

And right in front of the plate glass that separated them stood some of Drusilla’s new friends. On some hidden signal, Mose picked a minion up in his thick hands and threw him over the brass scrollwork. Someone down below screamed, and the minion burst into ash in mid-air, sprinkling down on shoppers below.

“I’ll assume this is a threat,” Spike said, unsure. One could never tell with Dru.

“It’ll be so much fun when we have Daddy back,” Drusilla said. “Can’t you see it, William? The whole family together again? We’ll have such parties. The people taste so lovely here – broken and spicy.”

“It’s a nice shopping mall, love. But Angelus is in Europe and he isn’t planning on visiting.”

“Silly Spike! His golden sunshine has come looking for you. He won’t be far behind. All I have to do is hold you, and everything will come to me.” She kissed the back of his neck, lingering to play her tongue over the taut skin as he pulled away from her.

“Pet, perhaps I’ve been unclear: not interested in getting back together, luv. Sorry. It’s not you, it’s… no, wait, it’s you.” He impressed even himself with how well-composed his voice sounded. He hoped his smirk was as convincing.

Drusilla continued to pet his hair, his neck, her hands occasionally sneaking down his torso to grab playfully. She didn’t meet his gaze. “Poor, poor Spike. Did you not see? The light burns, precious. Burns you all up.”

“You told me I’d burn up, Dru. I did. That part’s been done. An’ part of me wishes I’d understood, pet, when you tried to tell me. But it’s over. You and me are over and you had best believe Angelus isn’t…”

Dru smacked him – it might have looked like a playful tap to those uninitiated to vampire strength but it made his whole head vibrate like an over-ripe melon. “Hush. You shall have to have another lesson.”

Outside the window, Mose squinted at Drusilla, then shook his head in resignation. Another minion was selected and dragged, struggling, to the railing.

“Watch closely, sweet,” Drusilla pulled back on his forehead. “Watch the light.” Her fangs scraped along his temple as the second minion burst into ash just as the first had, after a brief career as a flaming, flailing body. Hanging baskets of plants swayed slightly in the breeze from his passing.

“Keep killing the minions,” Spike said, straining against Dru’s awkward hold. “Keeps getting funnier. You know that only helps our side, don’t you? You and Angelus both – can’t stop killing the help.”

Mose entered the shop – the door jingling gently as he stepped in, tapping dust off his suit-coat. “My Queen, I think that’s enough demonstration for today. We don’t want to waste our resources.”

“Just telling her that.” Spike pressed his head back, against Drusilla’s shoulder, to look up at the big man. “Could you now maybe tell her how this isn’t the best way to win a bloke’s heart?”

Mose looked over him like he hadn’t spoken. “Would you like to spend more time here, My Queen? We could have lunch brought to you.”

Lunch. Spike grimaced even as his stomach howled in eagerness.

Dru pressed her chin into the hollow of his clavicle. “Bring it here, please! William must watch. He’s been naughty and shall have nothing to eat before bed-time.”

Right. Enough of THAT. Spike had been wriggling and maneuvering around Drusilla’s persistent embrace for some time now and thought he’d figured out the exact direction where movement would be least resisted. He leapt to his feet.

Or attempted to. Ripping, wrenching pain, and a sound of scraping deep in his chest.

Mose chuckled and knocked him out with the most casual of punches.

***

Arthur had been kind enough to drive Faith to the West 25th Rapid station. She’d looked up at the clock tower on the West Side market, taking in the red morning sky. “Sure you can’t take me all the way to the heights?”

He rolled his eyes in reply and said, “Be careful.”

She noticed he locked his doors before pulling away from the curb. She shouldered her purse and jogged down the stairs to the train platform, a little grateful for the time she’d have to take getting home again. Time to think, or rather not think. Just time. And the normalcy of slipping her pass into the card-reader and finding a seat and watching the graffiti roll past… it was like being home.

As the train rolled out from under Tower City, she saw the sunrise bright and gleaming ahead of her.

Then remembered she was east-bound. She turned to look behind her and saw the sun was still a fat tomato, low in the sky behind the Terminal Tower. She looked forward again. An old man in a dirty ball cap met her gaze and shrugged. “This is fucked up,” Faith said, to no one in particular. She fished her cell phone out of her pocket.


	11. Coming Together

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not much to say before this one - the plot has taken over!

“You know, he’s NOT ‘your’ vampire.”

Buffy leaned against the closet door. A possessed man was inside the closet, beating with crazy-stupid strength, trying to get out. “I’ll take ‘segues’ for five hundred, Alex?”

“Not segueing,” Sara set a pin in her mouth temporarily, “Continuing our earlier conversation that was so… ugh… rudely interrupted.”

Quasar was working diligently on the doorknob with a nail file and a handful of pennies. “Not my vampire. I get that. He’s his own man… vamp. Whatever.”

“No, I mean Faith’s got prior claim on that, honeybun.”

Buffy froze, though her body jerked with the struggles on the other side of the door. She looked away. “Don’t they make locks on these doors anymore?”

“Just hold him a little longer, hon.” The door quivered and shook and she had to pick up her file again. “What is it with possession making them all super-strong, anyway? You’d think they’re just PEOPLE.”

“We wouldn’t want it to be too easy,” Buffy grumbled, digging her feet into the molding across the hall. “Could you maybe do that FASTER?”

“Almost got it…”

“Where’d you learn to do that, anyway?”

“FOUR older brothers,” she said with an eye-roll like it was something Buffy should have known.

“When you say ‘prior claim’ you aren’t… they aren’t dating, are they?”

From the region of Quasar’s rear came a peppy, all-beep rendition of a pop song. “Oh heck!” Quasar slammed her nail file into the door-knob with slayer strength, making the wood creak and groan around it. “That should do it,” she said, fishing her cell out of her pocket without another glance to see if her door-sealing had been successful.

Buffy gingerly stepped away from the door, expecting it to burst open any second. It rattled in its frame, but held. “So this is the last one, you think? The famed Windermere Magi? Wonder why they went fruit-loop when they had such a good gig going.” She dripped sarcasm over that last sentence as she pointedly looked around the shabby hallway with its fire-doors and bulging plaster.

“Yeah, we’re there now – still. OOOOHmigawd you wouldn’t believe the…” Quasar paced the hallway, oblivious (or uncaring) to the sounds of struggles from three locked rooms and one closet where she and Buffy had laboriously herded the insane denizens of 31221 Grove Street. Buffy, for her part, winced at the other girl’s remarkably cheerful – and loud – tone. Experience and Murphy’s Law soundly stated that there’d be more of the crazies coming soon. They’d attacked with mindless furry, slobbering, scrambling, animal-like and oh-so-very unkillable, being normal people, kinda.

She walked to the end of the hall and peered out the little arched window there. Streaked with dirt and protected on the outside with bars, it looked out onto an eerily quiet street, dark shadows under trees, teal sky above like fluorescent lights over a fish tank. There was their car, still on the street below. What time was it? She fished out her own cell phone. Seven new messages. Ten am??!!

“Right, on our way.” Quasar pocketed her phone. “Come on, Boss-lady, we need to hustle back to the cemetery. Elisa and company are pinned down at the Garfield Memorial.” She grabbed Buffy’s elbow and dragged her toward the stairs. “They’ve been trying to reach us all night!”

“We still haven’t searched the house for clues.” Buffy looked back at the second-floor hallway and it’s rattling doors. It had taken all night to round the insane magicians up and lock them safely away before, well, they made with the hurting.

“Like we’re going to search any of THESE rooms now. Please, you’ve seen one summoning circle, you’ve seen them all.”

Buffy shrugged and hurried after the junior slayer, eyes on her cell phone. Seven messages. She hit the button to show her the missed calls. Faith. Faith. Faith. Seven calls from Faith.

And why was THAT more ominous than the banging and moaning behind the second floor doors?

She let Quasar drive – not that Buffy was not WAY good at driving these days – you try getting a European driver’s license! But all her concentration was on her phone.

“First unheard voice message,” the annoying computer lady said, “Today. Six sixteen a.m.: Buffy? Buffy call back if you get this. The sky’s even more wrong. Heh. I guess you know that, wherever you are. But I’m not reaching any of the girls. It’s, like, six o’clock, I’m on my way home. I got more info out of that weasel Arthur. Two objects – a scroll and a thingy – we get those to him, he does some mojo, we get Spike back. I’m just picking up a bag and then I’m heading to get that scroll. Call me when you get this, okay? Don’t want to fuck this one up.”

Beep. “Second unheard voice message. Hey – B. Faith. I’m at the house. No one’s here. I’m heading to Lakeside. Meet me there if you can.” Beep. “Third unheard voice message.”

“Mumblefudge!” This from Quasar as the car jolted to a sudden halt. She reached over and snatched the cell phone from Buffy’s hands. “The gate’s closed. We’ll have to hoof it. No time for that.”

And then Quasar was running around to the front of the car. They were parked in the driveway up to the cemetery gate. Buffy wondered when she’d been regulated to side-kick status. But then, it wasn’t her town. She followed the little redhead, who was walking back and forth in front of the wrought iron pikes, looking for a way in.

Quasar turned, hands on her hips. “It’s ALWAYS opened by 8am. Always. Something is very wrong.”

“Faith said she was heading for the cemetery,” Buffy said, and grimaced as this sounded vaguely like she was blaming her sister-slayer – which she wasn’t. Then again, local authorities did have a habit of wigging when Faith was around. “Come on, we’ll go over.” Thick vines encased the stone walls of the cemetery. Buffy grabbed hold of one and tested its strength. It would break, but hopefully not until she had hold of the next one. She set her boot toe on a crevasse and hauled herself up.

***

The car was missing and no one was answering their cells, so Faith hopped on her bicycle and rode cross-grain against the morning rush hour traffic that poured down Cedar and Mayfield in an endless downtown-ward stream.

People on the top of Cedar Hill really were asshats in the morning. Slayer strength and speed were all that saved her. How did the messenger dudes in lycra shorts do it?

Lakeview’s gate was closed at the top of Little Italy. She let her bike fall to the ground and hauled herself up the stone-and-wrought-iron. What the fuck? Was it a federal holiday or something?

Green light flooded overhead, competing with the more wholesome sun. She landed on her feet and took to running right away, not even feeling the sting from impact until she was half-way down the first hill. Wade Chapel – stop number one. She jogged, looking up into the gentle slopes dotted with marble statues and trees. Something had stomped like hell all through the tulips, dragging up to the Garfield memorial. No time to worry about that now.

She honestly expected to get jumped. But she made it to the cool white chapel without incident and was soon jogging up its little path: a mini Parthenon standing by itself in bland Victorian neo-classical splendor. Inside it was placid, a little dusty, musty. The Tiffany windows staining all the marble like spilled jello between the glittering, pagan-looking mosaics. It wasn’t a big place, just a few rows of pews. A toy of a chapel, over-decorated and useless. She counted the green brass grates set into the wall. Third from the left. It wrenched free with a terrible sound, like the whole little building was crying at its violation.

Lift up the marble floor-panel behind the grate and there, completely coated in dust, was a cylinder of intricately-worked brass. Faith glanced up at the stained glass, the coronation of a virgin too pretty to be real. “Can I take this? Nothing but a little B&E between friends?” She smiled and saluted the vacuous, flower-ringed saints.

It was full daylight now, and she paused to smile at the trees and the pond as she walked out of the chapel. One down, one to go. Just had to find out where the others had gotten off to with the car. Because no way was she riding her bike all the way to Collinwood and the Beachland Tavern.

She tucked the scroll-case in her purse and took a leisurely pace back to the main cemetery road, and up the hill.

Only to freeze at the sound of running feet. She turned and ducked instinctively.

“OMIGAW! FAITH!” Quasar tackled her in a more friendly way than she’d been preparing for. It was all Faith could do to check her instinct to throw the younger slayer and instead just gently disentangle herself.

“Don’t fuckin’ surprise me like that!” Faith clutched her purse like she wanted to clutch her heart.

Buffy had her hands on her thighs, resting from the run. Her hair was a mess. Sure sign that B’s been in a big fight – not even taking time to smooth the ‘do.

“You got my message?” Faith asked.

Buffy started to answer, but Quasar’s voice overpowered her. “No time! Elisa’s pinned down in Garfield’s tomb. We gotta go!”

Faith swore, looking to Buffy, who was staring at her strangely. In fact, Buffy hadn’t moved since laying eyes on her. “You okay, B?”

But Quasar was already halfway up the hill. Faith turned and jogged after her, Buffy silent at her side.

James A. Garfield’s memorial was a lone gothic tower on the highest hill in the cemetery; stone gone black and metal greenish from years exposed to Cleveland’s pollution. Faith noted again the disturbed flower beds and broken branches leading up to the tomb from the main road. Shit, she should’ve known.

Soon they were standing at the base of the ugly thing, each straining to hear something from the inside, each unsure what to do.

“Shit,” Faith said, “There’s only the one way in – I think.”

“Well, then there goes the element of surprise,” Buffy said, and jogged up the stone steps to the big, gothic doors.

“We could try to climb up to the balcony,” Quasar mused, leaning to the left to look around the fat tower to its rear, where indeed a first-floor extension stood, topped with a nice parapet and look-out platform.

“How long you been up, Q? Feels like it’s working on 48 for me. You wanna climb that?”

Together they followed Buffy up the stairs.

Buffy was already leaning her back against one of the pillars that framed the center space of the memorial, looking over her shoulder at James A. Garfield’s statue like he might be behind the whole mess. As Faith and Quasar sauntered in she frantically waved at them, pressing one finger to her lips.

Faith slunk down to another pillar. That’s when she heard it too – the thunks and cracks and grunts of a fight echoing in the somber chamber. Somewhere overhead.

She soft-footed it to the base of the curving marble staircase, peering up into the conical tower. Shadows and swinging lamps. Something crashed. Someone leaned over the railing above. “Son of a BITCH!” shouted Rona, and there was a crunch and a scream.

Right. Fuck stealth. Faith ran up the stairs.

The second floor of the tomb was just a walkway around the center space, ringed in Byzantine archways and metal rails. Rona was kicking a police officer back and back and back – around the ring and toward Faith.

Not questioning the sitch, Faith came up behind and clocked the cop. She fell in a crumpled heap.

Rona was breathing heavy. “We gotta get the others,” she said. “Downstairs.” In her fists she was holding an iron lamp post, its base twisted into a twirl of sharp metal.

“What the fuck’s the sitch?” Faith asked, but Rona was already running down the slippery marble steps.

They turned a corner, Buffy and Quasar joining them on the first floor, and there they were.

The lower level of the tomb was full of shuffling figures with glowing eyes. Elisa and Connie stood in the center of the mausoleum, behind cage-walls, holding torches between two flag-draped coffins.

Glowing faces turned to them. Rona shifted her grip on the lamp-post. “Don’t got any damn tazers do you?”

Faith shook her head.

“Faith, take Rona and go left,” Buffy said. “Sara and I will go right.”

“And do what?” Faith demanded.

“We just need to clear a path to the door,” Buffy said, snatching the lamp-post from Rona. “And get them out of there.” She ran forward, lamp-post level in front of her, pushing back the confused hoard.

The crazies were screaming as loud as the metal slicing into the marble walls and dragging against metal grates.

“Fuck, B, you’re shit at planning,” Faith shouted, and flew into the crowd to the left, kicking the face of the nearest crazy.

From that point, it was chaos, limbs and hands and rough sweat and stone and metal and bodies shaking the cage-like crypt as they flew against it.

Voices shouted instructions – left – right- no your OTHER right – back here! We’ve got her go go go!

They forced their way out to the manicured lawns of Lakeside. Somehow, Buffy had expected the zombie people to stay in the dark confines of the crypt – monsters didn’t fight in broad daylight, usually. It wasn’t fair! They kicked and dragged all the way UP the stairs in the mausoleum, and all the way DOWN the stairs on the outside. Buffy spun a hard kick into the head of the large man who was trying to tackle her. He was dirty and fat, dark potting soil smeared on his cover-alls. It took three solid kicks to the head before he finally floundered on his feet. Usually, she could drop a human easier than that.

And usually she didn’t want QUITE this much to bash Faith’s head in. She was being all… competent and un-crazy. It wasn’t fair.

Faith had one arm wrapped around Connie’s waist – Constanza had gotten injured at some point and was having trouble moving on her own, still Faith was able to kick a crazy in the head without letting go of her as she hobbled toward the front gate.

“No!” Quasar jumped over the zombie she was wrestling against the stair-rail. “Down that way! The car’s on Euclid!”

And they were pelting down the hill on the smoothly winding asphalt of the cemetery road, six girls alone in an empty landscape.

They broke through the Euclid Avenue gate and piled in to their car, driving off with a few glow-eyed insane folk reaching and clinging to them.

“We were supposed to be looking for a gods-damned sigil,” Rona said.

Quasar was driving – ironically the smallest of them physically got the most room to maneuver. Elisa and Faith were squeezed on either side of Connie in the small back seat while Rona sat on Buffy’s lap, forced by the angle of the car roof to look into the back seat as she addressed them all. “It’s somewhere in East Cleveland, near Windermere. We have to find it to stop this glowing green shit. They must have been expecting us. Looked like all the cemetery employees – we got some groundskeepers in overalls, some maintenance men, and the security guards. It was touch and go until we got the last of THOSE taken care of. Sonsabitches had guns.”

“I hate guns,” Buffy said, trying to shift to be more comfortable under Rona’s weight.

“Thought I was done for three or four times. Had to lead the rent-a-cops away from the others, you know? Knock ‘em out one at a time. Threw their pieces over the wall. Shit. We’re gonna have to go back. I mean… we left guns lying on the ground, out in the open. What if the real cops…”

“Don’t worry about that now,” Faith said, sounding calm. “We have a new M.O. We stop at the house, Connie, whoever’s most tired, you stay put, but I’m going out to Collinwood. Got Arthur’s shopping list, and it’s one item down already. Got this scroll of whatevertheheck right here.” There was a hollow, metallic sound as she patted her purse.

Buffy bit her lip, suppressing the urge to throw Rona off her lap, crawl over the gear shift, and throttle Faith. “How do we know that’s a good plan? What about this sigil the council sent Rona after?”

“No offense, B, but the council’s over the hills and far away. Our first priority is getting Spike back, and if it so happens we gotta clear up this green mess on the way? Bonus. I don’t want to admit it, but I trust Arthur to help us.”

“Is that really your first priority? Spike?” Buffy twisted, trying to see around Rona’s arm.

Faith’s voice was quiet. “We don’t leave behind our own. Not my crew.” She was looking out the window.

“We have to get home,” Elisa said. “Connie needs to lie down, not be smashed up in here like this.”

“Almost there, sweeties,” Quasar assured, turning uphill. “Couple more blocks.”

“I’ll go,” Buffy said. “To the thing… wherever you’re going. I’m still awake.”

Faith turned away from the window and for a brief moment, slayer’s eyes locked and more was said than unsaid. “All right,” Faith nodded. “Just you and me. Sounds like fun.”

***

Spike woke up smelling sex, the punched-tin squares of ceiling over his head alerting him immediately that he was on his back this time. Sex. There was an uncomfortable thought when one has just regained consciousness too oft lost. Female, the scent, all womanly arousal and expenditure, sweat. Drying and adhering to his midsection. Lovely. He rolled his head, checking carefully for restraints this time before he went off half-cocked. Good, solid metal on his wrists, as expected, the hiss of the chains on carpet as he moved. Feathers. Fuck. Was it too much to ask just once to wake up and have the disgusting, decaying taxidermy removed? He felt an itch deep in his shoulder-bones, half psychosomatic, as he thought of the dead bird flesh pressed hard against his own, and it with no preternatural preservatives.

He found he could sit up. The chains dragging after him easily until he was almost to his feet, then they reached their limit.

Drusilla sat in the shop window, and she glanced at him once, as though not very interested. She was humming and rocking a child in her arms.

He closed his eyes, hearing the terrible little heart-beat, frightened half to death, and faltering. “Dru?”

“Shush, shush,” Drusilla spoke to the mute child in her arms rather than to Spike, “Daddy’s coming home.”


	12. Walk In, Walk Out

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feeling pretty good about this chapter, even if I did decide to... do something rather extreme just as I was typing that was NOT in my outline but... well, you'll see.
> 
> Don't laugh but I'm posting in lieu of the third "resolution" piece - it needs a little more tender luvin'. :)

Buffy’s eyes were sore. She felt her eyelids like sandpaper against them as Faith drove them through too-bright streets. The view out the windows was getting more brown-grey industrial BLECH as they went. God, she was tired. How long had she been running, straight? Since she got off the plane two days ago, it felt like.

“There wasn’t a fight for the scroll.”

Buffy tore herself away from staring listlessly out the window. “Wha-huh?”

“The scroll. No one was guarding it. So there’s a good chance this’ll just be a walk-in, walk-out.”

“Oh no. It never is.”

Faith squinted at her. “We’re still a ways away, Buff. You can shut your eyes if you want. Catch a few Z’s.”

Buffy shuddered, involuntarily. Where had that come from? She pushed hair tiredly out of her face and set her forehead on the window-glass again. “I’m fine.”

“Still afraid I’ll gut you, B? How the hell can you feel that way, after The First?”

How can I not, when you’re already gutting me? Buffy bit her lip. They passed a large sign that read “Welcome to Collinwood: A Cleveland Neighborhood”. Gee, redundant much? “I’ll be okay,” she said, pretending the previous question hadn’t been asked. “We’re almost there, right?”

“Right.” Faith looked straight ahead, her little cupid-bow mouth rolled inward practically to invisibility. “I slept with him.”

Did the car crash? Buffy felt like it crashed: a big, bone-jolting stop. But the scenery just kept scrolling by – they were going under a highway. “Oh God.”

“Just to get it out there. We did the nasty. No pretending I was you this time, if that counts for anything, and if it helps he was all ‘is this betraying Buffy?’ about it. But we talked and we agreed, you two were splitsville plus, what, a year? More? About time the boy stopped living like a monk, don’t you think?”

Buffy’s fingertips went numb. Was this what a heart attack felt like?

“B? B, say something. Okay? Just wanted it out there. We’re gonna have to have our heads back in the game before we stop at this bar. I said it COULD be walk-in, walk-out. Doesn’t mean it’s going to be.”

Buffy flexed her fingers, amazed at how little she could feel while all the blood seemed to be rushing to her skin. “Just get us there,” she said. “No more talking.”

“Oh no. I’m not doing the not-talking-about-it thing, B. You know what happens when we don’t talk. We fester until killing each other doesn’t sound like a bad idea.” She palmed the steering-wheel, taking a turn too wide. “Well, that or it all comes out in the middle of freakin’ combat and quite frankly, I’m not interested in sharing my emotional problems with the baddies.”

They were on a narrow road running along the freeway, separated from it by an embankment and chain link. It didn’t look like the way to ANYWHERE, and the summer afternoon sun was glinting off everything, making wet mirages on the pavement.

“Two weeks ago, as far as I knew, Spike was dead,” Buffy said, placing extra emphasis, final and firm, on “dead”.

“Dyin’ ain’t what it used to be. You know that.”

“No!” Buffy caught her knee on the dashboard as she turned to face Faith. “No. You don’t get the right to talk so casually about this. Spike was dead and I… I never got used to it, but I was trying, and he wasn’t in my mind all the time anymore. I could not miss him, at night, not look for him under every window and tree. I was finally done grieving, and suddenly, I’m chasing after him and he’s captured and he could DIE and I’ll have to start all over again. I can’t… I can’t feel it all again.”

The car lurched to a stop. Buffy heard the seat-belt unbuckle and then felt Faith’s arms wrap around her, drawing her hot face against a slightly sweaty shoulder. “Hey, hey, it’s okay,” Faith said.

“You don’t get to…”

“Yeah. I’m a big fat bitch. We knew that already.”

Buffy was looking at Faith’s chest – at the fuzz on her t-shirt, up-close and out-of-focus. “He was supposed to always be there. You couldn’t get rid of him. You could take him for granted.”

“We’re getting him back, B. Come on. You’re tired, I’m tired, but we’re here.”

Buffy wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and straightened. She nodded and unbuckled her seat belt, glancing outside to see where ‘here’ was. She opened the passenger door and stopped, turned. “You SLEPT with him?”

“Actually that’s a euphemism – there wasn’t any sleeping.” Faith winked one tear- glistening eye and slipped out the driver’s side.

Two car doors slammed hard. “How could you do that? How could you do that to him?”

“TO him?” Faith jerked her head back. “What do you think this was?”

Buffy strode four steps in front of the car, fists planted firmly on her hips. “We don’t have time for this. Which building is it?”

Faith stepped up on the curb and jerked a thumb at the giant light-up “Beachland Ballroom” sign above them. “For the record – I only found out he was among the unliving a month ago. And, yeah, me and him didn’t exactly have as much time together as a microwave and a burrito, but I missed him like hell. He was my proof-of-concept, you know?” At her uncomprehending stare, Faith sighed, “Dark side, B. If a vampire could shake it, hell, my little trip to villainy looks like a lunch break.”

“Oh,” Buffy said, completely at a loss, and followed Faith through a dented security door.

The tavern was nothing much – fake wood-grain paneling and acoustical tile. A couple booths, some wobbly-looking tables, and a stage. The walls were decorated with old concert posters bragging about the top acts of yesteryear, which probably played to these same seats, if the state of the vinyl was any indication.

“Can I help you ladies?” A young man walked in from the back, holding a rag. “Bar’s not open until six. Concert starts at eight.”

“Just looking,” Faith said, and certainly she was scanning the walls up and down. “Supposed to be like a bundle of sticks,” she said to Buffy.

The man lifted a section of bar that was like a swing-gate between the room and the bar-area. “Well, I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to ask you to leave. Was the door open?”

Buffy shot an angry look at Faith, who shrugged. “It’s open now.”

She walked back out into the lobby area to inspect the shorn lock, metal twisted like tinfoil. “Damn it, Faith!”

Bar-guy was now standing in the middle of the room, mashing his towel like he wanted to wring the life out of it. “If you don’t leave, I’m going to call the cops.”

“I’m sorry, really, and we’ll be going, we just…” Buffy whimpered. Coming up with off-the-cuff explanations? So not her thing.

“Our cousin left something here,” Faith said. “Family heirloom. Said he stuck it on the wall.” She stopped scanning the posters and gave bar-guy a big smile. “He’s nuts. Atsbergers. It’s a bundle-of-sticks thing, some kind of Indian thing. C’mon, champ. Give us a few secs and we’ll be out of your hair, no harm, no foul.”

He looked from one slayer to another, confused. “I’m not sure I can let you just take something off the walls.”

Buffy said, “You’re right,” covered the distance between them in five strides, and then slugged the man. He skidded across the linoleum and hit the tacky fake-paneled bar.

Faith stared at Buffy.

Buff shook out her fist. “Come on, let’s find a fetish.”

***

“The state department has not issued a statement yet, but sources point to a chemical factory explosion causing the chaos in East Cleveland. Toxic fumes have affected residents, causing sight problems and hysteria. University Hospitals and the Cleveland Clinic have taken on…”

Elisa turned the television off. Rona was asleep on the couch next to her, curled in a little ball. The big, tough slayer – second in seniority for their little group – had insisted on staying up with Elisa, when they’d all agreed someone should be awake in case Buffy and Faith called. Well, that had lasted two commercials. Elisa patted the denim-clad leg and went into the kitchen for more tea. She was glad sheer exhaustion had taken care of the job, otherwise she had a handful of sleeping pills waiting to put her under. Rona was still muttering about going back for the sigil before she passed out. The last thing they needed was for any of them to be wandering around East “home of the zombie-men” Cleveland half-asleep.

She had another plan. While her tea steeped, she got out her cell phone. “Hi, it’s Elisa. Good. Hey, listen – I need a favor.”

***

Cleveland Hopkins International Airport was, like many smaller American airports after 9-11, a warren-like maze of security measures slapped onto corridors not designed for them, leaving one with the impression that a local junior high school had suddenly been appropriated and turned into a combination prison/ shopping mall.

And Angel, predictably, got searched. Sure, international flights were more closely watched, but he swore there was some kind of vampire profiling going on. Or maybe it was his fault for wearing a black coat, gloves, hat and scarf in the middle of summer. (In case of accidental, temporary sun contact – but he couldn’t very well tell the security people that.)

Three hours in security getting dirty looks from a junior detective who was sure he’d find SOMETHING illegal left Angel in something beyond a bad mood. Add that when originally booked the flight was to arrive at dusk, but there’d been a four hour delay. Add that he was supposed to be seated at the very back of the plane, without a window, but those seats ‘may be taken by special needs flyers’ and he’d had to give it up because, again, no explaining that he WAS a ‘special needs flyer’ could take place. Seven hours in the air dodging little ovals of death and stewards trying to shove him back in his seat because some stupid little ‘seatbelt’ sign was on. Add that he’d arrived two hours early for the flight to avoid the sun and you had, yes, one cranky vampire.

He hadn’t seen the city yet and already, Angel hated it with all his heart. He shouldn’t even be there, but he still had Buffy’s last email running through his head.

_Angel –_  
Spike’s been captured by Drusilla. I thought you should know. I don’t know if you care or not. I know, why should you? I’m… we’re going to get him out. We’re meeting with some sleazy warlock tonight who might help. It’s all right if you don’t care, but if you do, tell me. I don’t want to be alone in this. Buffy

If he was entirely honest with himself, it wasn’t a plea to come and save the day for her, but Angel was tired of being entirely honest with himself.

Buffy, Spike, Drusilla: each of these names had its own unique pain on reading – a sort of twisting stab in the gut, lungs and brain. Combined they were surer than a summoning spell. He couldn’t stay away. He cursed himself that he’d let Spike leave in the first place, when it was only SUSPECTED that Dru was the mad queen uniting Cleveland’s vampires. How could he, once again, mix the alchemy of his own demise?

Angel sank into an under-sized chair in an under-sized coffee stand that was all the airport had to offer in amenities for post-security arrivals. He picked at the rim of a cup of something vente grande macchiato – he’d balked at ordering – that he wasn’t going to drink. He waited for the sun to go down. He didn’t have an address, but he had a few places to start beating heads: The nightclub Spike had arranged to meet Faith at. The local Woflram and Hart office. The demon bars Giles had listed for him. And right now, beating heads was just what he was in the mood for.

***

Dru had slipped effortlessly from one of her happy deliriums to misery, kicking the little child-corpse around the small room. “Gone. All gone and it’s not working! Nothing is working!” She moaned, grabbing her arms and sinking to the floor. “Gone gone gone. Papa’s gone, silly girl! It isn’t going to work!”

“Hush, luv, it’ll be all right,” Spike said, then rolled his eyes at himself. Comforting Dru was a bloody reflex. He carefully shifted himself against the wall – there were about five positions, he’d discovered, that he could relax in without pain, but each had a time limit. His back itched – it crawled, like a million ants were having a cocktail party in his spine. He was sure there was pus or something forming. He shifted again, pressing his back to the wall. The feathers whispered and complained, but the hot pain was a welcome stop to the itch.

Drusilla fell upon him with shaking hands just as he was getting up on his knees. “No. I wanted Daddy to come, but he’s not, it’s the Angel-beast and my party will be ruined!”

Not bothering to hide his sarcasm, Spike asked, “Why don’t you unchain old Spike and have him take care of all of it for you?”

She pulled at his hair and shook her head from side to side, keening. Where was the god-damned gangster and his cronies?

“Dru, pet,” he reached for her, drew her hands down in his and let her fall into his lap. Right. This is why comforting Dru was second-nature. It was self-preservation. “Shush, love. No sense wailing about it.”

She turned her tear-streaked face up to him, hopeful big eyes, dark as sin.

He looked quickly away. “None of that.”

She wriggled in his grasp and he took another jarring, painful hit against the wall. A feather came loose. Good. One down. Her hands twisted and fought for freedom from his. “Why not? We could have such fun.”

“You want fun, you’ll have to have it with me present.”

“You used to like it so.”

“Yeah, well, ‘s decidedly less kinky being a mindless fuck-doll when you have a sense of shame.”

She rose onto her knees, looking down at him with guileless confusion. “But there’s no other way I could have you, naughty boy.”

Spike bit his lip. Sometimes Dru could be so canny, knowing what you were thinking before you did, but sometimes, she was as naïve as the child she pretended to be.

He let go of her boney wrists with a feeling like releasing dice. “Sure there is, love.”

She dropped her chin, smiling coyly. “You’re just trying to make me forget about daddy.”

“S’right,” he rumpled the layered gauze on her thigh. “An’ I could be doing a better job if these chains weren’t in the way.”

She pursed her lips, smirking knowing at him, and Spike let himself fall against the wall, feathers scraping, bones protesting. He’d tried, at least.

But then she said, “I always liked the chains better on MY wrists.”

He smiled. “Course you did, love. Want to play?”

She clapped her little hands together. “Yes, please!”

“Well, whatever game you want, petal. I’m at your disposal.”

She crawled backward, and he felt those strangely strong fingers, so lithe and thin, curling around the cuff on his wrist.

“That’s it,” he whispered.

She ripped the cuff open and moved to the other.

Spike flexed his fist, staring at his bared wrist in shock.

Drusilla stopped, playing with the cuff on his right wrist. “You ARE going to play with me when you get free, aren’t you? Not going to be a bad dog?”

“Yeah,” he said, not the least bit believable even to his own ears.

“But I want my bad dog. Grar! Want you to bite and snap and punish!” Her fingernails scraped lightly over his forearm.

He knew what he should say – it would be, should be, easy to coax her with dirty promises. But he couldn’t quite bring himself to. Fuckin’ soul. Fucking shame and conscience. Like he wasn’t a bad enough liar to start. “Just take that off, pet,” he said. “Come on.”

She wasn’t going to do it. She pouted and played with his hand. He watched, thinking about things to say and disgusted with himself for thinking them.

Then she did it. With a snap, the cuff fell. He pushed her off his lap.

The pain was minor. His legs were still cuffed together. He wobbled and nearly fell trying to take a step. He crouched and snapped the chain between the cuffs.

“NO!” Drusilla launched herself at him, knocking him over. Something crunched and he howled, twisting out from under her though it felt like he’d leave his shoulder behind. The door was just ahead, with its little chain of bells, he dove through the glass.

Glass shards echoed against marble, tinkling below in the very bright, very present sunshine as he scrambled, smoking, along glass and into the next storefront.

Musty clothes, another jingling bell. He pushed himself through a rack of dresses, darkness, good, just to take a moment. This wasn’t the way to escape, but it was a start. He parted wool and sequined skirts and peered out the shop-window where a faded mannequin perpetually gasped in surprise. The afternoon sun was slanting directly in to the storefronts on their side of the arcade now.

Behind the counter of Lady Chatterly’s Vintage shop, Christine set down her phone and stared at the bare knees and blue-gray feathers poking out from behind the rack of sixties cocktail dresses.


	13. Getting It Done

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OMG I'm so excited now that this story is nearing completion. It's all I can think about! *squee* Hope you're all enjoying it as much as I am.
> 
> [Here's a picture of the old Superior Viaduct](http://www.pbase.com/sapearl/image/87568302/original) if you were interested - a panorama so it's kinda perspective-wonky.

Faith stared mutely at Buffy all the way around the Beachland Tavern and Ballroom, as she searched for and found the weird bundle of sticks – it was a sort of ankh with a shower of clay beads dangling on one side. Faith stared mutely as they got back into the car, and, equally mute, turned her attention to driving away.

“Now we just get these two things to that Arthur guy, right? Do you have a phone number for him?” Buffy held the fetish and the scroll case in her lap. She turned to look at Faith. “Faith?”

“You socked that guy, B. What happened to the good slayer?”

“Sometimes innocent bystanders need a punch in the jaw. You do what you have to. Now get us to this Arthur guy quick. Should we take the freeway?”

Faith peered at the street signs. The freeway was near here, but where the hell did a body get on it? She turned down a random street and scanned the horizon for green signs. “I can’t do it, B. I can’t be the good slayer. Okay? I’m not… I’m not that strong. And you can’t be the bad one. I called dibs.”

And then Buffy laughed. Faith looked at her and nearly missed the turn-off for the freeway. It was a kind of broken laugh.

“Right,” Faith said slowly, craning her head to merge onto the Shoreway, “Who says there’s gotta be a good one?”

Buffy continued to laugh, one hand open against her mouth. Faith glanced at her and laughed too. They merged into a great curve of freeway and the lake opened up between trees and sound-walls to their right. Downtown came into view, a proud stack of buildings all in a huddle. They still laughed. Maybe they were just that tired.

***

Right, Spike thought, next time, chain up the crazy woman before you bolt. Or wait for the sodding dusk.

He stood behind a rack of cocktail dresses, most knit polyester and smelling of attics. The sun was streaming right in the front of the shop, painting all the walkway in front of it. He could dive, maybe, for the darker area on the level below, but Dru had been kind enough to demonstrate that he would burn before impact, the distance being great enough.

There was a snap. He turned to see the lady behind the counter hold a broken wooden ruler out toward him like a sword. She’d vamped out.

“Right,” Spike said. “Got any trousers?”

Drusilla was wailing next door, and running footsteps sounded behind the rear wall of the shops. Spike dove forward and snatched a letter-opener off the counter. The woman swung her makeshift stake, trying to keep him at bay.

The door directly behind her burst open and three minion-types ran in.

Back door. That would have been an idea.

Spike grabbed a random garment off the rack and dove back into the sunlight.

***

“No, we’re on 90.”

Arthur sighed, pacing his bedroom. “That IS the Shoreway. Have you passed dead man’s curve yet?”

“Look, we’re on 90 heading toward downtown. We just passed East 55th. I’m not asking hard questions. Where. Do. I. Get. Off?”

Buffy tried to get the cell phone back from Faith. “Faith, just drive. Let me…” Faith shrugged her away and they veered very nearly into a semi that blasted its horn at them.

Arthur threw a duffle bag on his bed and unzipped it, flinging the sides wide. “Get in the left two lanes. You’re taking dead man’s curve onto the interbelt and getting off at 14th.”

“There’s a sign for 71 and a sign for 2. Which do I take?”

Arthur opened the top drawer of his desk and tossed items from it into the duffle. “Left lanes. And give Buffy back the phone.”

Buffy stuck out her tongue, having heard this, and snatched the phone from Faith’s hand. “You’re going to get us killed.”

“Nobody knows how to drive in this town!” Faith threw up the hand that HAD been on the wheel to flip off a Hummer that bore down on her from the left-most lane.

Buffy knew she was being extra-calm just to irritate Faith when she said, “Okay, we’re taking the left-most lane. There’s a big yellow sign that says ’35 mile per hour turn’ and big black arrows to the left. What do we do after that?” She nodded, mm-hmmed, and turned to Faith, “Stay in this lane until after we pass under three bridges. Then get over to the far right as soon as you can.”

The car vibrated as it passed over rumble strips. “No one’s going fuckin’ 35,” Faith muttered, swerving around a slower car and narrowly missing another.

They exited the freeway right on the interbelt bridge that cut through downtown, a narrow sudden exit after a long series of entrance-only ramps. “West 14th/ Abbey Road” ducked down fast off the bridge like a suicide and split immediately.

“Which way? B! I got four seconds of road here, which way!”

“Right – no LEFT! LEFT! But then stay right.”

The ramp curved sharply under the bridge it had just left. Then they were lead on a series of sharp, sudden turns and steep hills down into the flats, Faith demanding the cell phone from Buffy because “That ain’t what he said! Obviously there’s nothing that way!”

Twice they ended up in dead-ends and had to turn around. Once on a gravel lot near battered buildings still bearing 1920s ads for motor oil.

“He says we’re almost there. It’s called the Superior viaduct. Look for signs on our right.”

Finally they caught a tiny, dim little sign that led them up a ramp that… ended. Crumbling road bed lead up like they were going onto a bridge, but when they were high enough to see, they saw nothing. The Superior viaduct once connected Superior Avenue to the west side of the Cuyahoga, but was replaced in form and function by the high-level Detroit-Superior bridge, leaving it a cut-off stump of masonry, a bridge to nowhere staring out over the placid Cuyahoga.

Arthur stood alone in the center of a weed-choked roadbed, his cell phone in one hand. They had to park the car because stone pillars blocked off the last quarter of the bridge-that-was. Buffy ran forward, she had the artifacts and suddenly it seemed like speed was everything and even the time to turn a key was too much time to waste.

Arthur was standing, she saw as she approached, in a cleared circle ringed with feathers and white powder.

“Don’t disturb the salt!” Arthur warned as she jogged up to him.

She jumped a good three feet over the ring, just to be safe. She was catching her breath as he pulled the scroll-case from her limp fingers. He popped the lid and pulled out the parchment. “Good,” he said, nodding. She saw the letters through the paper, translucent in the sun. His ringlets were shining bright, as was the smart black suit he wore. Black suit, in the July heat. He looked like a stage magician.

Faith gripped Buffy’s hand. That’s when she noticed she was there. She gripped right back.

“So do it already,” Faith said. “Are you waiting for the f’n light?”

“Do you have the fetish?” he asked, not looking up from the scroll.

Buffy rattled the little stick-and-beads thing. “Present.”

“Walk the circumference,” he said, pointing. In a soft voice, he began to chant.

***

“Insurance inspectors?’ Rona raised her eyebrows. “I’m out for a couple hours and you call insurance inspectors?”

Elisa bit her lip, but met the incredulous gazes of her fellow slayer straight on. “Look, we KNOW this sigil-thingy has to be in the magi’s house. That’s where they cast the spell to call forth the god.”

“Yeah, but I’m missing the part where you sent insurance inspectors to collect it.” Rona tilted her head back, looking to where Quasar and Connie sat on the couch for support.

Quasar was doing her nails and barely even glanced up.

“It’s simple. We have lots of these guys who check out houses for insurance purposes before sale. Now, the Magi house isn’t listed with my company, but I told Derek that the owner was looking to unload and a development corporation had expressed interest so we had to move fast,” she smiled, warming to her subject, “and that there was an historical artifact that had to not be present when the official inspection took place. You’d be surprised how often a sale has shady details, and Derek said…”

“You sent a civilian to do our job.”

Elisa scowled. “’Civilian’? We’re the army now? Look, maybe these psycho guys won’t attack someone who isn’t super-powered. Maybe they can feel the slayer-ness in us.”

“And MAYBE you sent some innocent clipboard-carrier to his death!”

“They have my cell number.” Elisa held up the phone as if that answered everything.

Rona shook her head. “Connie, Sara, grab your purses, we’re going to East Cleveland.”

“I have work,” Quasar said, wriggling her gaudily-colored talons.

“I’ll get the tranq darts,” Connie said. She pushed off the couch.

“I’m telling you they’ll come through for us,” Elisa said. “You don’t have to do anything. The sigil will be delivered to the Chamber tonight.”

Quasar looked up from her nails for the first time. “The Chamber? You’re kidding!”

Elisa shrugged. “It’s the only night club I know about. And we have to get this thing to Arthur, right? He lives out that way.”

“Fine.” Rona turned on her heel just in time to snatch the tranquilizer gun from Connie. She checked it for ammo with frightening professionalism. “Keep your rendezvous. And keep your cell charged. Me and Connie are going to make sure you didn’t just kill the idiot.”

“He’ll have already been and gone by the time you get there!” Elisa protested, but Rona was already marching down the steps to their car. Connie gave her a shrug in passing.

Elisa sighed. “I’m trying to help. We have connections in industry. Why not use them? I mean, there’s risk, yes, but honestly why does it always have to be US?”

Quasar twisted the cap on her “mango madness” lacquer with an air of finality, her fingers splayed out to protect the drying color. “Well it seems like a perfectly valid plan to me. But what are you going to wear?”

Elisa rolled her eyes and climbed the stairs.

***

The lime green sequined mini-dress smelled terrible, all plastic and tar, as it smoldered. Spike kicked it hurriedly away as he danced about, patting his skin to stop any flames – he wasn’t on fire, but it always FELT like he was about to go up in flames, and this wasn’t the sort of thing one wanted to test the limits on.

He’d stumbled into an empty storefront. Already someone was banging on the back door, trying to force their way in. The wooden door splintered along the hinges and Spike decided to help the blokes out, ripping a chunk free and kicking the door back into Drusilla’s minions.

He made one hasty cloud of dust and ran down the dreary back corridor with a letter opener in one hand and a chunk of wood in the other. It was dim in the corridor, masonite-lined walls marked with scrapes and scratches from trash bins and who knew what else. He saw an exit sign and pushed through to stairs. Right. They were on the third floor. He grabbed the banister and launched himself over. His shoulder reverberated as one of the stupid wings hit the stairs as he sailed down. (How was THAT for irony – wings getting in the way of falling?) He was two flights down when he heard the door above bang open, rapid footsteps scuffling after him.

The bottom of the staircase opened out into a narrow atrium. Sunlight one direction, filtered light the other. Well, not a choice there. Another locked door to kick open and he was on the bottom level of the arcade, looking up at the rails and walkways to the glass ceiling. Shadow fell graciously all around him, as he stood under another curve of walkway, surrounded by potted plants and scrolling brass work.

A strangled sort of gasp drew his attention. A young man in a white t-shirt and baggy jeans stood staring at him, iced coffee drink in one hand, straw hanging from his mouth.

Right. He was still naked.

Spike sprinted past the boy, and other coffee-shop patrons, across a brief gulf of sunlight that he hoped would stop his pursuers – few vampires had the stones he had when it came to sunlight.

He ran to the back of a store loaded with clocks and small electronics which had the misfortune of being the most immediate doorway. He leapt over the glass counter at the back and crouched down, ignoring the paralyzed man standing there with a clock radio in his hands.

Spike dropped the makeshift stake and felt along the wings with his right hand while he guided the letter opener with his left. It wasn’t the sharpest thing in the universe and he clenched his teeth as he felt it break rather than slice the threads sewing his skin closed, each with a sharp little tug.

That done he wrenched the wing from his back. There was a squeal and groan of wire and bone and it wouldn’t budge but he kept it up, gritting his teeth and twisting until the heavy dead thing fell.

He looked down on the blood-soaked feathers. Wires in crooked shapes protruded out, coated in something white and spongy here and there. The sting of air on his open wound felt clean. He went to work on the other wing.

“Uh… I don’t think you should… you’re, um, bleeding, mister… I’ll just call…”

Spike looked up at the man through a haze of pain. “Don’t fuckin’ call anyone.”

A display of disposable cameras fell over as three minions stormed into the little shop. The shopkeeper dropped his clock radio.

“FUCK,” Spike said. He shook his head twice to clear it and picked up the long splinter of wood again.

He rose behind the counter with mouth slightly open, panting through his pain, blood dripping from his hands and one tattered wing hanging behind him.

“Shit, man, I can see BONE,” the clerk gasped.

The minions approached, patting the smoking arms of their flannel shirts and jean jackets – an 80s reunion tour, this lot, very Springstein with their bandanas. The girl in front had an off-the-shoulder blouse.

“We’re, um, closed?” the clerk said.

Spike threw the letter opener into the lead minion’s left eye. She crumpled, cursing. Spike jumped over the counter and gave her a solid kick to help her stay down. His stake went into the next minion and the third – gut punched him. Spike swung, but his arms felt like jelly, he knew the punch had no force. So he pushed the vampire out into the arcade, blocking and pushing until they were at the edge of the sun that now only lit the west-facing storefronts. The minion panicked, windmilling his arms on the precipice of shadow, and that’s when Spike got him.

Immediately thereafter he collapsed to his knees, the stake clattering on the marble mosaic beside him as he tried, impossibly, to catch his breath, his strength, back into his body. Everything was trembling. Why was everything trembling? Right. Blood loss.

He heard running feet and with a groan –why was a bleedin’ escape never DONE? He turned and stumbled in to another shop, which had sweat pants in the window. He paused, swaying drunkenly, only a moment to consider if the brown and orange was more or less hideous than the blue and red before grabbing the Cleveland Browns sweats right out of the window and stepping in to them.

“Ee! Uh…” a female voice gasped behind him, “you’re going to have to pay for… I mean…”

He only had to glance her way to silence her. Young thing, white as a sheet. He tried to smile. “Wallet’s in my other pants. Do me… a favor, love?” He caught hold of a mannequin in a “Cleveland Rocks!” t-shirt to keep his feet and took a step toward her. “Help me get this thing out of my back. I’ll see some cash gets back to you soon’s I’m not dying, yeah?”

He made it to the counter with the aid of the wall, a stack of framed posters, and a t-shirt rack that he knocked over. The young woman, after a few seconds’ consideration, put down the staple-gun she was brandishing and motioned for him to turn around.

“Eep!”

He reached back to grip the edge of the counter. “Rip it out. I can take it. Took getting it put on there, didn’t I?”

The woman made whimpering noises and he felt her gingerly touching the wing, feeling along it for a place to grip. “Um… eeew. Okaay…”

Spike took a deep breath, and happened to glance up.

Mose Cohen stood in front of the shop window, all in black, his gold star of david gleaming like a star indeed in a sea of night.

“Hurry up, love,” Spike muttered, and closed his eyes.

***

Arthur’s eyes glowed white, and then the pale glimmer spread all through his body, limning him in contrast to the red sunset painted on the buildings around them.

Buffy stopped shaking the little fetish. She looked at Faith, who raised her hands in question.

Arthur slumped, then fell, the light leaving him. He crushed the ancient scroll under his fist as he pushed himself up. He smiled. “It is done.”


	14. The Other One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I left you all on such an icky cliffhanger last chapter I COULDN'T make you wait too long for an update. Here it is!

“What’s done?” Faith stepped into the circle. “The crazy color-thing’s gone?”

Arthur was grinning like a kid on Christmas morning. He carefully smoothed the scroll against his thigh and rolled it back into its case. He glanced up at the two slayers. Buffy still held the fetish in front of her like a little kid holds a maraca. “That’s the ritual. Thank you ladies. We could clean up, or I could just cast a little spell here.” He slipped the scroll-case into an interior pocket of his jacket. He took three steps back, until he was against the concrete barrier at the very end of the viaduct. “Volare!” He sang, cheerfully tossing a little tuft of something grey out of his pocket.

And then he started to float away.

Buffy and Faith glanced at each other in shock.

They reached the barrier just short of him slipping out of range. He laughed. “See you on the hellmouth, ladies! I’m free!”

Faith clambered onto the barricade and looked likely to jump after him. Buffy grabbed her pant-leg to stop her. “What about Spike, you freak?”

But he had turned his back, sailing up over the river, waving his arms a bit in a flailing attempt to steer. They watched until he disappeared behind the giant, rotating guitar for the Hard Rock Café.

“Son of a bitch.” Faith jumped down, and wavered a bit, exhausted.

The slayers walked back to Faith’s car leaning on each other for support.

***

The Chamber was dead. It wasn’t even nine o’clock yet, so this wasn’t surprising, but Elisa was having trouble keeping herself entertained reading the bathroom graffiti and nursing the same cup of coke. (Three dollars for a pop? At the risk of sounding like her mother: Aii ya!)

Quasar had leant her a blue brocade corset which, despite Sara not having the largest breasts on the planet, still had an irritating habit of sagging open at the top on Elisa. She tugged at it and took furtive glances at the mirror-wall. If you didn’t look too hard, actually, it made her look curvier. Score one for the slayers! She uncrossed and re-crossed her legs and checked her phone for messages again, just in case she hadn’t heard it ring.

There was a small commotion at the door. “Woah, woah big guy! Five dollar cover, man.”

“I’m not here to dance. I’m looking for a friend. Skinny, short, annoying, neon blonde hair.”

Elisa dropped the phone on the table. Her gut was doing that thing, that acidy tingle that meant vampire nearby. She walked out onto the dance floor and took another quick glance at the mirror-wall. The bouncer was arguing with blank space.

Elisa clenched her teeth and ran forward. Damn it, if this random vamp caused her to miss Jeff’s call! “It’s okay, he’s with me,” she said, hurriedly interposing her small form between the two large men, one living one not. She grabbed the vampire’s arm and dragged him out into the hallway.

He looked down at her hand in surprise. “You’re a slayer.”

She pushed him away and fished her stake out of the top of her corset. (Hey, there was extra space anyway.) “Yes, and you’re a vampire. Guess what happens next?”

“I’m Angel!” he said, like this would mean something.

“I have a meeting to take, Angel, and I got my black belt BEFORE I was called, so how about I just call you ‘big pile of dust’?”

He danced out of the way of her first swing with both hands in front of him. “BUFFY’S Angel! Good guy! Soul!” He was all the way back to the parking-lot doors now. “Don’t they tell you guys about me?”

The tall Asian girl in the badly-fitting corset stopped mid spin-kick and rotated her leg back to the ground. “Wait! You’re that guy Spike hates!”

The brief flicker of irritation on Angel’s features was enough of a confirmation. He lowered his hands. “Buy you a drink?”

“Please! I blew my month’s discretionary getting here. You wouldn’t believe what cabs cost in this town.”

“I just got here from the airport, so yes, I believe. Had to stop myself from asking the cabbie if he meant Pesos.”

Angel stuck his hands in his pockets and Elisa stuck her stake back in the front of her corset and they shared an awkward silence. “Look, I’m here to meet someone, and it’s kind of important. He’s delivering a sigil to help us banish an elder god.”

“Oh,” Angel said. “So, what are you drinking?”

“Just coke,” she smiled, following him back into the club.

As he got out his wallet to pay the cover, Angel asked, “What art do you have a black belt in?”

“Juvenile karate. I SO wasn’t a threat to life and limb. And don’t say a word! I was just trying to intimidate you.”

He crooked his arm and she, with a smirk, set her hand on it. “It worked. Let’s get that soda and sit down. They don’t play the music too loud here, do they? I have some questions to ask.”

“Fine, but world-saving takes precedence. I’m dropping you like a lead brick as soon as Jeff gets here.”

“No, I get that. Where’s Buffy?” He let her slide onto a bar stool while he waited for the bartender to notice them.

“She and Faith went after some other magic artifact that’s supposed to help. We gather up our pieces, cast some spell, and voila, no more apocalypse.”

“Sounds pretty cut and dried, for dealing with an old one.” Angel frowned, handing her the plastic cup of soda the bartender handed him.

She sipped it, shrugged, and turned her back to the bar, scanning the small club. “Did the council send you? Are you more muscle?”

Angel had ordered a whiskey for himself and was counting out bills with a scowl. “What? Muscle?”

Elisa smiled at how offended the big, scary vampire looked. “Well, we could use all the help we can get.”

“I just want to talk to Buffy. If you can give me her address…”

“Oh! Jeff!” Elisa uncrossed her long legs and slipped off the bar-stool, raising a hand overhead at two guys in leather vests at the doorman’s kiosk.

“Dude,” Jeff said, wrapping his arms around Elisa. “What a day.”

“Did you get it?”

“Elisa, honey, that place was wack. Didn’t even go in. I think you should drop the deal. No profit to be made in East Cleveland.”

Elisa stiffened and pushed the boy away. “Angel,” she said, “Better finish that drink. We have to move out.”

***

“Spike you are beginning to not be worth the effort.” Mose stepped into the shop with a disdainful glance at the overturned racks.

The shop girl whimpered and tugged uselessly at the wing still wired to Spike’s shoulder blade. It hurt like fire-bleeding-fuck, but it wasn’t enough to dislodge it. Girl had no stones. She backed away with fluttering hands and apologies. “I should call 911.”

“You really shouldn’t,” Mose said, walking casually through the disarray. Behind him, the brass rails over storefronts flashed briefly as the setting sun fell behind the horizon.

“Come on then,” Spike said. “I’ll bleed all over your nice suit, you nancy prick.”

“I don’t think so.” Mose stopped in the middle of the store, folding his hands neatly before him. “You’re going to pass out soon enough from blood loss. My people are securing the exits as we speak. You owe me three minions, by the way.”

The shop-girl whimpered again and stepped back, having jiggled the wing one last time like a stuck key. Spike shook her away and took what he hoped was a menacing step toward Mose. There was no reaction in that studiously calm face, but Spike straightened to his full height, ignoring the slippery feel of blood on the tile floor beneath his bare feet.

The shop-girl was muttering “oh god oh god” over and over.

A woman in a smart business suit leaned in the shop door. “Mr. Mose, the Queen is agitated.”

“Not surprising,” Mose sighed. “Fetch Judson and his crew. We’ll have her toy back to her soon and she’ll be happy again.”

“Sir, Judson just called from Tower City. Arthur has crossed the Cuyahoga.”

“Impossible!” Mose turned for the first time away from Spike.

Spike took this opportunity to dive at him and shortly found himself in a half-nelson under a thick, very strong arm, the high-quality wool suit nevertheless burning his injuries as he struggled.

Mose calmly continued his conversation. “He’ll be heading to the hell-mouth. Gather everyone. Bring the Queen her handmaidens. We’ll meet him there and give him reason to fear hell.”

“I don’t suppose a hostage could get some food while you’re at it?” Spike grumbled into the larger vampire’s armpit.

Mose reached with his other hand and plucked the sagging heron-wing from Spike’s back like removing the petal from a daisy. “All in good time, Mister Spike, as the Queen wills it.”

***

A sobbing woman, wearing a thick winter coat on the July day, fell to the ground in front of Connie and begged, “Please, stop it, it’s inside my mind!” Then, with a scream, she dove forward, scrambling to choke the slayer right there, on the sidwalk outside the Free Clinic.

Rona got her with the tranq gun and they dragged the body over to wall by the clinic’s doors. The place didn’t look open, though. There were others wandering around, eyes glowing, wailing. Three cars stood in random spots in the parking lot, their windows bashed in. That was the high point of the slayers’ trip to the Mage house.

Whatever it was, they had to stop this light freak.

“What if it gets in US?” Quasar was holding a floral-print scarf over her mouth and nose, as if the insanity-causing elder demon was some kind of communicable disease.

“We get to the house,” Rona said. “We get the sigil. We get out.”

She said it like she’d been repeating it to herself all the way down through the cemetery.

They walked grimly through the streets of East Cleveland, in a wedge formation, Rona and the tranq-gun at head now. They walked down the center of the street. Euclid Avenue was uncharacteristically still. No one was driving through East Cleveland that day.

They reached the street the Mage’s house was on. It was impossible to tell the time, the teal light painting everything, making the flaking white paint on the old mansion glow like it was under a blacklight.

The front door opened and a single figure stepped out onto the stone stoop. He closed the door behind himself and trotted down the steps oblivious to them. Then he turned on the sidewalk and stopped, mid-whistle.

“Oh,” he said.

It was Arthur.

Quasar and Connie stepped out to flank instinctively, not a word passing between slayers.

“Well, hello!” Arthur said. He was holding something glittering and small, a hand-mirror with a fake jewel back? A Hairbrush? He flipped it casually. “Lovely to see you ladies. If you’re looking for the sigil, I have it here. Thanks for the effort though. Good to know you were going to get it for me. Means a lot, girls, really.”

He took a step to the left and Rona moved into his path. “We aren’t doing anything FOR you, magic-boy.”

He raised an eyebrow. “You’re not actually trying to stop me, are you?” He waved the sigil – that had to be what the hairbrush-shaped gem was – at the heavens. “I’m trying to deal with this… this!”

Connie shifted nervously but Rona didn’t move a muscle. “We’re done trusting you, mister, and letting you lead us around. So you hand over the magic thing and you come quiet, or we’ll leave you here for the crazies.”

Arthur sighed. “This is what I get for stopping at Bo Loong on the way. Damn I missed that dim sum.” He opened his jacket and tucked the glittering object inside.

“Are you hard of hearing?” Rona pointed her gun at him.

Arthur shook his head. “The Old One feels me near. I’d run if I were you.”

And then he jumped… up. The tranq gun went off, dart bouncing off a nearby car with a metallic ting. Quasar craned her head up into the teal sky, the hand with the floral scarf now against her forehead. “Since when can he fly?”

Connie started to speak very rapidly in Spanish, under her breath. Quasar dropped her hand and turned, knowing by now that this only happened when things were very, very bad.

A crowd blocked the end of the little street, coming toward them slowly. It was a deep crowd, spilling from sidewalk to sidewalk, and more were coming to join it.

“Fuck,” Rona said. She turned, another crowd was creeping out from the buildings, forming at the end of the dead-end street, coming at the Slayers.

“What do we do?” Quasar asked, looking from one forming mob to another. The varied quiet sounds of footsteps, clothing rustling and bodies moving became a living thing in the air.

Rona checked the cartridge in the tranq gun. It only held six more darts. She ducked under the shoulder strap, slinging it onto her back. “We run,” she said.

***

Angel had a rental car. This, plus their few moments of friendly banter, had Elisa regarding the vampire quite highly by the time she’d guided him to the interbelt.

Then he shot it all to hell by lecturing her between asking and receiving directions back to the east side. “An insurance inspector? You sent a civilian in your place. An insurance inspector!”

“God, you sound just like Rona! Turn here.”

“Well, Rona sounds like a very smart person.”

“First off, we aren’t an army, we’re unpaid, volunteer superheroes.”

“Super. Exactly. We have more strength, an ability to heal. We should stand between normal people and the forces of darkness.”

“Just because someone doesn’t have super powers doesn’t mean they’re completely helpless! Secondly, we’re dealing with normal humans here, normal human strength, just driven a little nuts. Jeff’s in the ROTC… wait, slow down!”

The road ahead was blocked by a shuffling mass of people, their backs all turned to them.

“Is it a street fair?” Angel ducked his head, peering out the windshield. “Is it…?”

“It’s our problem,” Elisa said. “Stop. Stop the car before they reach us – I mean we reach them!”

Angel slowed the rental car to a halt. They were on a four-lane major road, with turn lane in the center, but all before them was a shuffling mob. Something stirring, like a mosh pit.

Suddenly a running figure broke free. Three running figures. Elisa jumped out of the passenger side of the car and raised both her arms in the air.

Slayers. “Unlock the doors! That button there! Jeez, have you never driven a Corolla before?” Elisa dove across Angel’s lap to hit a button on the driver’s door seconds before three women piled into the back seat. The mob was surging toward the car now.

“Drive! Reverse! Now! Go!” Connie slapped the head-rest behind Angel’s ear hard.

Angel knew when to act first and ask for explanations later. The little Toyota squealed as he K-turned in the middle of the street.

No one said anything other than Elisa’s loud, clear, “Turn left. Here. Now take the second right, at the light.” The other slayers had their hands on the windows, kneeling up on the car seats as though they would have to leap through the glass at any moment.

Possibly, they would.

But as they cut through side-streets, the threat diminished (though the strange green light did not.)

“One more block, left, and then right again,” Elisa said, falling back into her seat. “Then find a parking spot. We’re home.”

“This your inspector?” Rona asked from the backseat, nudging her chin toward Angel.

Angel flicked his eyes up to the review mirror. “No. Angel,” he said.

“I know,” Elisa laughed, “He says it like we’re all supposed to know. This is Angel, from the council. The other vampire with a soul?”

Angel’s eyebrows shot up, but finding a parallel parking spot took up his time so he couldn’t come up with a snappy enough rejoinder. HIM the ‘other’??

There were some “Ah’s” and “Oh! You know Spike?” comments. He parked the car.

Rona led the way up to a large Victorian home, all wood and gingerbread. “First we check in, see what Faith and Buffy have to report,” she said. “Then we find that son-of-a-bitch and make him pay for leavin’ us high and dry. Shit!” Rona stopped in the middle of the porch. “Forgot my key.”

Quasar hurried forward to do the honors.

Angel hung back. “Is Buffy here? Is Faith? Is this, um, where you live?” He noted the numbers nailed over the steps and wondered guiltily if he should call Giles and give him the address.

The last of the four slayers paused in the doorway, looking back at him. (It was Connie.)

“I have to be invited in,” Angel said, gesturing at the doorway.

“Yeah,” Connie said. “Wait here.” She slipped into the darkness of the house.

This time, Angel couldn’t stop himself from speaking. “Did you make Spike wait on the porch too?”

He peered through the half-open door (and how fair was it that he couldn’t even reach across the threshold to push it further open?) There were women’s voices, footsteps running up steps. He tried not to feel and act like a petulant suitor waiting for an unsympathetic parent’s permission.

Finally there was a thud and a shout. The door flew open and Faith jumped headlong into his arms. He gasped at her super-strong hug, staggering against the porch railing. Slowly, his hands came up to hold her, feel the soft cascade of brown hair, and a weight he hadn’t known he’d been carrying dropped from his shoulders. He sighed and leaned his cheek against the top of her head. “Faith.”

“Big A! Been too long, man. You are a sight for sore eyes.”

He pushed her back gently and shook his head. “Are you getting enough sleep?”

“Always rough in the midst of an apocalypse, you know that.” She knocked his hand playfully away as he reached to brush her cheek.

“Is Buffy…?”

“Yeah, she’s here. They’re waking her up now same as they did me. We JUST got down, so don’t expect any warm wishes. I almost tore Sara a new one.”

He smiled, non-verbally acknowledging the warm welcome he’d already received. “Can I come in?”

Faith tossed her head. “Shit man, where are my manners?” She dragged him by the wrist to the door. “You are always welcome, Angel. I invite your ass in.”


	15. To the Hellmouth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, everything's taking a back seat to this one right now as I near the THRILLING CONCLUSION! OMG!!!
> 
> NB: earlier in the story I think I said the hellmouth was on the west side or something - I have since decided that it is on the corner of East 9th and Carnegie, under Jacob's field. Consider that earlier line stricken, or something. This is what I get for posting as I write, huh? WOOOT Livin' on the edge! But there is something to be said for the spontaneous quality of the work thus produced.
> 
> [Here's a picture of Jacob's Field](http://www.ballparks.com/baseball/american/jacobs.htm) if you're interested. That fuzzy double line of trees off to the right? That's Erie Street Cemetery. Carnegie Avenue is cutting across the lower right corner of the picture.

Angel dropped onto the couch, putting his head more on a level with Faith’s. He held onto her hand, not wanting yet to let go or deal with the chaotic sounds and smells of the house full of slayers. “What’s going on? I’ve… well I just got into town and I met your crew. And some strange mob. Feels like I’m coming in at the middle.”

“Doesn’t it always?” Faith ran a hand over her face, rubbing the sleep from one eye. “Let’s see… where to start?” She sat next to him. “Spike’s ex still rules the city. We’ve been absolutely SHIT against her, some ‘old one’ has awakened in East Cleveland, turning the sky green and every person who spends too long there crazy. Spike’s captured. This Arthur guy said he’d help us if we helped him. Well, we helped him.” Faith raised and lowered her arms. “I don’t know what to do next. Somehow we gotta get a sigil, banish a god, and save Spike. Wouldn’t hurt to get the crazy vamp-chick dusted, either.”

Angel nodded, slowly, parsing this into a to-do list. “Buffy emailed me asking for help.”

“Did she? Bitch.” Faith snatched her hand away from him.

Angel scowled at her. “Come on. You need help!”

“This is my shop, Angel. Not hers. She doesn’t get to decide to cry uncle and wave a white hanky at the watchers.”

“I’m not the council of watchers,” Angel said, smiling at the very idea. “Point of fact, I hate them too.”

“She’s barely been here. Who is she to think we can’t handle this? Who made her the boss of MY group?” Faith was up, now, pacing. “Bad enough I’m forgotten the second Punk Rock gets a whiff she’s in town…” she threw a sudden grimace at Angel. “Delete that last sentence, yeah?”

Angel blinked. “You mean Spike?”

Faith stuck her hands in her front jeans pockets, affecting a shrug. “Yeah. Spike. He’s going to run straight into Buffy’s arms. Tell me that pisses you off.”

Angel frowned, and looked down at his hands. Big hands, Faith always admired them, big, competent-looking hands. Like her dad’s. Faith thought those hands could hold the world.

Angel shook his head, eyes wide now. “I can’t believe you’re asking me to console you over SPIKE. I mean…” he looked over his shoulder, as though expecting to find a cue card there, then back at her, spreading those big hands wide. “You do know about us, right?” At her confused frown, he sighed, “What would you do if Buffy came to you and said she was worried I didn’t want her back?”

Faith tilted her head back, jaw tight. “Tell her you’re too good for her!”

“I’m not.”

“You are. Listen, I don’t know what fairytale romance you had back when she was sixteen…”

Angel held up a hand. “Wait, wait. This isn’t going right.”

“Damn straight it isn’t. What do you even see in her? Me and you, we’ve had hard lives, Angel. Yeah, she’s been through a lot, but deep down it’s the spoiled little rich girl part of her that’s driving.”

Angel stood up, looming suddenly very large and very close to Faith. “Back up a few conclusions, Faith. I got the metaphor wrong. What would you do if **I** came to you, worried Buffy was going to pick Spike?”

The hard lines of Faith’s face softened. She tilted her head. “Dunno. Do you?”

Angel licked his lower lip and looked away from her.

“Okay!” Quasar ran into the room. “Faith, grab weapons or whatever you need, we’re heading out. Oh, new guy? We’re assuming we can use your car. Speak now or forever ride shotgun.”

Angel stepped back from Faith to scowl at the petite redhead. “My car?”

“Were you guys kissing?” Quasar waggled a finger between them. “Omigaw you totally were!”

“No,” Faith said, a laugh in her voice as she swung around a gobsmacked Angel. “Not everyone’s a total slut, Q. Now what the hell is up with the cars?”

Quasar gave Angel a little narrow-eyed look just to let him know he wasn’t getting past her radar, mister! “Buffy says Arthur said he was going to the hellmouth. So that’s where we’re going. Maybe he has a ritual or something to do with the sigil, and we can, like, stop him.” Quasar shrugged. “I’m getting my jacket in case there’s rain or hellfire or something.” And she was gone into the kitchen.

Angel shook his head after her. “That’s your plan?” He raised a hand. “I mean, that’s the whole thing? Maybe he’s going to be somewhere let’s go?”

Faith bumped him with her shoulder. “B’s no Wes. Wanna help me pick out weapons?”

Angel flinched at the mention of the watcher. Faith bit her lip and put her hand on his arm. They looked at each other. “Show me the weapons,” Angel finally said.

***

Drusilla was made up prettily, wearing a new dress of lace all in knife-pleats down from the empire waistline and ruffled like serrations along the scoop neck. A bevy of female vampires surrounded her, each also immaculately dressed. They floated like a bridal party down the wide marble steps of the Arcade.

Judson, apparently, had arrived, with about a million other vamps, and Spike had found himself with his hands bound, kneeling on the floor in a pool of his own blood.

It was just his hands this time, and rope, though the beating his shoulders had taken surely weakened his arms. But at least the blood soaking into his sweats made them look less stupid. With any luck the logo for the American football team was completely obscured.

For all her careful beauty – her hair was curled and piled up on her head with that silly gold diadem again – Dru wasn’t looking well. She sagged between the arms of two of her attendants and picked despondently at her neckline. “The lion’s come,” she said, “and the peacock. And Daddy too. All come, but not to play. They’ll rip at each other with their razor-sharp eyes.” She reached the bottom step and leaned heavily to peer at Spike’s face. “Poor Spike. He looks near empty. Have you given him anyone to eat?”

“Should we, my queen?” Mose asked, at the same time Spike muttered “Wouldn’t say no!”

She straightened and swayed over to Mose. “You want to go to the maw, my mouse. Want to stop the peacock? All the lovely chaos, it keeps us safe, keeps slayers busy. Wouldn’t want that to run out. Not before supper time.”

“Arthur has crossed the river, my lady,” Mose said. “And he is expected to go to the hellmouth. We should meet him there, before he can do harm.”

Drusilla giggled and made some play swipes with her fingers like a kitten, growling.

Mose frowned. “Have you seen something, my lady? Should we go? Or is his goal elsewhere?”

“No,” Dru shook her head, her private dance halting a moment, one hand raised as though touching Braille written upon the air. “Every which way, it’s best if we’re there. At the maw.” She whirled on her heel, grabbing up her skirt in two fists. “Hurry! Mustn’t be late!”

Her ladies parted as she ran up the steps, her soft slippers making the loudest sound in the cavernous hall. (Which was the funny thing about large groups of vampires. Didn’t make half of a percent the noise the same number of humans would.)

Spike let himself be dragged to his feet and marched up those same steps. He kept his eyes down, watching the little lights mounted under each step wink out of view.

It was dark, they were going outside, and his feet were unbound. If he hadn’t felt like hamburger meat, he’d say that things were looking up.

They walked a parade down Euclid Avenue, the merry vampire parade. It was after dark and not a party district so the place looked like the set of the bloody Day the Earth Stood Still.

They turned right on East Ninth and he wondered if they were going to the elegant little cemetery named after the street that didn’t exist, but then they crossed the street, where the wide sidewalk faced nothing but the imposing brick walls and tall fences of the ballpark. Two figures immediately started climbing the beige-painted fence decorated with flat metal silhouettes of baseball players.

Drusilla had her hands on the metal cut-out, fondling the two-dimensional man’s imagined genitalia.

“Handy, this,” Spike mused as two minions worked at getting the fence open – they couldn’t very well have their queen climbing it, could they? “I mean, if you have an apocalypse, you could sell tickets – everyone gets a view.” He used the distraction to worm his way close to the gate. He felt a metal heel pop back and forth over his wrist binding. The pain of each jerk flared after the fact, like a match lighting after you raise it from the striking surface. Pop-pain-pop. If he could just stay next to Babe Ruth here…

“Are you sad, Spike? Sad that Daddy’s come?” Dru turned, pressing her cheek against a metal thigh. “Poor boy. You never were Sire’s favorite.”

“I was sire’s only, thank the bleedin’ lord. Hate to see what craziness you’d put in… uh, you haven’t been making more vampires, have you luv?”

But her eyes were on the opening gate and he might as well have been speaking from outer Uzbekistan. He stumbled to get one more good swipe in at his ropes before strong hands were grabbing him everywhere he hurt. About one quarter of the stadium lights were on, where likely always on, flooding the vast space and blanking the sky.

A dark figure was dancing about in the middle of the green field. A dark figure in a SUIT, that much was clear, his shoulders folding into hard points as he danced like a freakin’ satyr and the slight mound of dirt beneath his feet glowed ruddy, like a candle flame viewed through your fingertip. Shit. The mop-curled head glanced their way and he saw it was Arthur, the mage that was helping the slayers. Wasn’t HE in the wrong place for a moondance!

“Stop him!” Mose bellowed, his deep voice reverberating off the empty bleachers as he pointed toward the soft glow. The gates opened and minions broke off, running across the grass like the sun was after them.

***

Angel finally saw Buffy for the first time as they were dividing up who would go in which car. One minute he was leaning on the car-roof, trying to ignore the girlish arguments about space and battleaxes, the next Buffy stepped out from the darkened porch to the yellow glow of the streetlights.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” she said, adjusting the shoulder strap on her weapon bag.

All the women in his life carried weapon bags. What ever happened to purses? Reticules?

Her eyes slipped from him to Faith, and back again. There was a silent question – which car?

Angel ducked into the driver’s seat of his rental to escape the subtext. Buffy slipped into the passenger seat.

“You came,” she said.

Elisa knocked on the passenger window, and Buffy rolled it down to receive a print-out of directions. “We’re parking in the lot circled here,” Elisa reached over to point. “In case we get separated.”

Buffy nodded and rolled up the window again. She looked at Angel. “Air? Please? It’s sweltering in here.”

He turned the car on. “Sorry.” The air conditioner came on full blast and he felt oddly panicked searching for the control to turn it down.

“You’re waiting for me to lecture, aren’t you? I didn’t ask you to come, you know that. I only wanted to know if you…”

“If I cared,” Angel finished. “Yeah, I care.”

Faith was waving all the other slayers into their little VW. There was more room in his Camry. Was this a vicious slayer ploy? He watched Faith, daring her to turn around so he could glare at her. Why was it taking so long to get five girls in a car? The silence was building between them in big, awkward chunks.

Finally the Volkswagon pulled away from the curb and he could concentrate on driving. At last, something to do with his hands, his eyes.

But he had to look her direction when they merged onto the main road. She met his eyes. “Are you mad?”

He blinked and missed an opening in the traffic. “No. Um… are you?”

“No. I’m glad. Glad you care.”

“Hrm? Oh. You know I’ll always care about you, Buffy.”

“I wasn’t asking about me.”

“Spike?” Angel looked honestly confused for a few seconds.

“Was I not writing in English?”

“You really care how I feel about Spike?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never had to deal with the two of you at the same time – I mean if one of you wasn’t helping me defeat the other. And now you’re like… I don’t know what you’re like. I don’t even know how **I** feel about all this. Having to deal with weird macho vampire vibes? Not on the agenda.”

He shrugged. What were they like? “Well, this is just like what I was saying to, um, Faith. Would you care if Faith was captured?”

She was silent a moment. “Yeah,” she said, the word heavy with mixed emotion.

He nodded. “Multiply that by a hundred.”

“Good. Just so long as this isn’t going to be another asking if the cookie dough is ready.”

“Buffy…” he shook his head, and had to pause while turning onto Carnegie. “He never moved on. You know that?”

“Oh believe me, the rumors of move-on-age are very much accurate.”

He raised an eyebrow at her. Buffy had folded her arms across her bosom and was glaring at the glove box like it had insulted her mother.

Angel couldn’t help smiling. “You’re still the same Buffy.”

The insulted scowl moved from inanimate to animate object. Still, he smiled. “Fill me in on the tactical situation. How are we deploying when we get there?”

She shot him a grateful look and sank back into her seat. Soon the car was filled with professional opinions and earnest discussion.

***

Spike didn’t have a lot of time to plan. The vampires were attacking Arthur. Arthur was ostensibly the good guy in this scenario, and he had two feet and bound hands to use. He ripped free of the hands holding him and ran pel-mel toward the pitcher’s mound. He slammed shoulder-first into Minion the First, knocking him away, giving the little bleeder time, maybe.

Pain shot through his shoulders – and wasn’t that getting bloody repetitious? – as he instinctively tried to bring his hands forward to catch himself as he fell.

World’s neatest grass, but no softer than any yard. He rolled and came up running toward the next nearest vampire.

The little mage screamed, arms overhead, lightning on the fingertips – Spike didn’t spare too long a glance. Seen one apocalyptic spell-casting, seen more than enough. He concentrated on lowering his head and hitting the next minion square in the gut.

Three pairs of hands descended on him as he tried to get back up and he spun on his back, kicking for his life. The ropes ripped grass beneath him, bringing a clean smell of earth.

“Come on, I’ll take all of you!”

“Screw this,” said a dusky woman. She pulled a stake from her hip-huggers and raised it overhead. Bodies parted to make way for her, pinning him down, knees on his legs. He was spread out like an insect on a matte board. This was it.

And she crumbled to dust which mostly fell in Spike’s eyes and mouth. Drusilla smacked her hands together. “BAD Minion!” she said. “No killing my Spike.”

For a moment Drusilla was framed in glitter and stars as the falling ash caught stadium lights. Then the scream became a wail, and Drusilla crumpled to the ground.

Spike barely had time to wonder what had happened when the vampires holding him were hit with a blast and fell as well. Two pairs of hands still held him tight, but no more where they leaning over him. He became just one of many huddled bodies on the ground, though he had the dubious benefit of being on his back.

A living wind – a blur of colors and screams – whipped overhead, swirling around the baseball field, glowing, only little bits of dirt and grass that were caught up in it providing any relief from the sickening teal light.

***

Angel said good-bye to his deposit and rammed the Toyota right through the yellow-striped parking gate on the parking lot they’d selected. Across Carnegie Avenue, Jacob’s Field was topped with a vortex of blue and silver light. That couldn’t be good. He hopped out and grabbed the bastard sword from the back seat without turning away from the spectacle.

The Volkswagon was emptying beside them. Faith had parked it on the street, ignoring several “no parking” signs.

“I take it this is the place,” Buffy said, pulling a battle ax out herself. “Just once I’d like t come to a hellmouth and have it be on vacation.”

Faith jogged into the street. “Let’s go! Team one to the west gate, team two with me!”

Angel hefted his sword and followed Faith. Buffy and three of the others broke off in the other direction. He looked ahead, to the gate they would assail. Heh. Battlements, gates – it felt just like storming a castle. “Hey,” he said, “You know what this reminds me of?”

But Faith and Rona were already changing course – the next gate after theirs was hanging open, a few figures standing guard at it. One pointed toward them, faces turned. More than one figure hesitated, torn between the onrushing slayers and whatever was happening inside the stadium. Fangs flashed.

Angel grinned and raised his sword high for the first cut. Game on.


	16. The big freakin’ battle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is it, folks.
> 
> I never did expect this to finish so quickly. I hope it doesn't disappoint! The whole fic runs just about 50,000 words, all told. This last chapter is around 3,000, like all the others, plus a 1,000-word epilogue because sometimes I just don't know when to quit.

Angel noticed the giant cut-out of a batter swinging for the fences as he was posed the same, having cleft the head from the body of some unfortunate vampire. He let himself take half a second to grin at the irony, then looked to see where Faith and Rona were, dispatching vampires to either side of him. There had been five guards, now there were two, and those were backing away, standing defensively.

Angel, Faith and Rona ran together along tall, tapering walls that made the gate a near tunnel.

They ran into a maelstrom.

***

Spike’s captors were scrambling away. He rolled to dodge kicking feet as someone crawled past him. Then he kept rolling, got his knees under him so he could rise.

He was damned if he was meeting this… whatever the hell it was… on his back.

There was a shape to the light, the wind, the… again, whatever-the-hell, it had an event horizon, a lumpy head limned in brighter light. And it was circling in tightening rings, like the needle on an LP, zeroing in on the spindle on the pitcher’s mound.

Arthur, the lucky spindle, was obscured by a curtain of sand, his voice just barely audible over the storm, still shouting out some ancient tongue. Spike staggered toward him, leaning into the wind that tore left to right, buffeting him harder the closer he got, like a hundred hands pushing back frantically.

And then that glowing wave front crossed him. Spike lost contact with the ground; came to himself lying on a white line in the grass, close to a wall plastered with adverts for Coca-Cola. There was hardly a breeze, just this small distance away.

And he knew, without a doubt, that the thing was mad. A wall of madness had passed through him, frightening and familiar – like walking on the surface of pudding. Like slipping between the borders of the comic strip of reality.

He got to his feet again. Center field was as opaque as a marble now, bits of churned up sod catching the lights as they spun like shards of glass. “Right,” Spike said, “only an idiot would go in there.” He squinted along the periphery of the ball park, what clear air there was between the tempest and the stands. Yellow posts marking the edges of the field of play bent like palms, metal and plastic groaning. There wasn’t any other idiot to do the job.

As he ran forward, he roared until every inch of air was expelled from his lungs.

***

Faith stopped dead, halfway to the foul ball line, arms akimbo, stakes at the ready in each hand. Her curses fell silent, lost in the white noise.

“Do we know what this is?” Rona shouted to be heard over the high-pitched whine of the gale.

“Angel!” Faith looked over her shoulder at him.

He nodded once, understanding. He felt the two slayers fall into position behind him as he took point, running toward the center of the field.

***

Buffy lead her team along the foul-ball line in from left field. “Uh… you! And you!” She pointed helplessly. (Why hadn’t she learned their names before now?)

“Elisa,” Elisa shouted, and grabbed Quasar’s arm, “Quasar!”

“That way!” Buffy waved her hand helplessly.

“YOU WANT TO FLANK IT?” Elisa stumbled to a stop.

Buffy raised both eyebrows and shrugged.

Figures were running away from the maelstrom, diving in to the dugouts. But there was one figure running TO it just ahead of them. A figure with no arms. Buffy squinted, trying to see.

“Let’s go! Whatever it is, it’s happening over there!” Quasar tugged Elisa’s sleeve.

Somehow Elisa’s muttered “Aii ya” carried over the screaming wind as she and Quasar sprinted toward center field.

Buffy and Connie ran up the foul line and cut in after third base, following the strange, armless figure, that was ducking and weaving through the mess ahead of them.

Buffy gripped her ax tight, hoping that whatever it was had a neck to chop. Where were Willow and Giles when you really needed magic?

***

It was like crawling through quicksand, like digging out of his grave, and Angel lost track of where the others were until, suddenly, he fell through.

He was on his hands and knees on powdery dirt. He looked up at an unfamiliar figure, his suit coat billowing around him like short black wings.

“Yashooonesh Jooosh Tamakarek! GO Theck! Ilbuberek!”

Faith stumbled through the wall of wind and destruction and fell almost on top of Angel. Her head snapped up almost before her hands touched the ground. “Arthur! You son of a bitch!”

“Yashoonesh!” He shouted, and glanced down. His eyes were glowing red. “Faith! Think I got its attention?” His shoulders suddenly canted, like he was pushed down from above. He raised his arms higher, gestured, “Yashoonesh Joosh Tamakarek! Tamakarek! Go Theck!”

Rona fell into the circle.

“You son of a bitch,” Faith got to her feet, fists clenched.

Angel’s hand on her arm stopped her from launching at him. “It’s a circle of protection.” He pointed at the line of rose quartz crystals imbedded in the ground all along the border between storm and calm.

Faith twisted her arm out of his grip. “And I’m going to toss the twerp out of it. He betrayed us, Angel!”

“No!” Arthur broke off his chanting. His voice was high, desperate. “I’m banishing the old one. It…” he fell to one knee. “HELP ME!”

Rona screamed. Faith tore her eyes away from Arthur to see her sister-slayer come to her feet, staring at her hands and sobbing.

“Rona?”

Rona raised her head, vaguely in Faith’s direction. Her eyes were glowing green.

“It attacks the mind! Pain! YASHOONESH!” Arthur’s second knee dropped. His hands were still overhead, like he was holding up an invisible ceiling. “Give me your knife! A knife! Go theck Ilburetek sha neshra!”

Faith hesitated. She knew, through every fiber of her being, that hesitation was the worst thing to do, but she couldn’t think anything but “don’t hesitate.”

Another figure fell through the now-opaque wall of wind, screaming. A man’s scream. It plowed right into Arthur, knocking him over.

The walls of began to crumble around them, the cylinder of calm becoming a dome. Faith dove for Arthur and picked him up. She pushed him back onto his feet – he weighed more than five times what he aught to have. She pressed her stake into his hand, not having a knife drawn.

He immediately stabbed his other arm and dragged the wooden point up, fighting against his sleeve. “Anoosh yashoonesh!” He called out, joyfully. He dropped the stake and seized Faith’s hand. “Strength,” he shouted.

The walls retreated a little. Three more people broke through. Angel ran to help them up. Rona was on her knees, keening, raking her fingernails over her chest. Buffy stumbled up, to Faith, her face all a question, her ax in both hands.

Faith held out her hand. Buffy let the ax drop to her side and took it.

“MORE!” Arthur shouted. “Strength!”

Quasar appeared like a pom-pom, her short red hair whipping around her head, but she still made it up the pitcher’s mound, brushing locks back from her eyes with the pommel of her sword, she let Arthur grab her arm.

And then the screams – wind, voices, it was hard to tell – the screams grew to such a pitch they pressed into their eardrums like a physical weight. There was no hearing it anymore, only the vibration of bones.

And then silence.

Arthur fell over, taking Faith, Buffy and Quasar with him into an untidy heap in front of the pitcher’s mound.

Angel had his arms around Rona. He looked up. Silence rang painfully. Debris littered the field, and bodies, tossed about like driftwood after a storm.

_God, I hope my hair doesn’t look that bad,_ Angel thought, not knowing that Buffy was thinking exactly the same thing, while looking at him.

“What…?” Elisa’s voice was the first to break the silence.

“OMIGAW! SPIKE!” Quasar shrieked, kicking her way out from under Arthur’s twitching arm.

Spike was face-down on the rear of the pitcher’s mound, rolling back and forth as he tried to get back up. Two rivers of dirt ran down his back like wings, dark and thick where dust stuck to blood.

Angel crossed to him in three big strides, stepping over prone Arthur and around Quasar. With a grimace, he ripped the tattered ropes around Spike’s wrists.

Spike felt strong hands lifting him, helping him up. He spat out a mouthful of dirt, and a curse as he tried to move his arms forward again and his right shoulder refused.

Without thinking, Angel grabbed the bone and popped it back into place, eliciting a “JesusHFUCK lemmiego!” as the blonde vampire ran up the mound.

Spike stood at the apex of the little hill, arms out at his sides, ready now for battle from any quarter, though he started by staring at Angel until the older vampire spread his hands out harmlessly at his sides. Spike turned. The slayers were scattered before him. Rona was the least affected, now, shaking her head and rising to her feet, looking confused. Faith and Buffy helped each other up and then promptly each grabbed one of Arthur’s arms.

“Mind telling us what that was?” Buffy demanded, jerking hard on Arthur’s elbow.

“You better answer,” Faith said, twisting him into an elbow-lock. “She’s the BAD slayer.”

“The old one… the ancient evil. I banished it. We… we won!” Arthur grimaced against the pressure Faith was applying to his arm.

“You little prick, you flew off after we got your magic toys together for you,” Faith hissed. “What would you have done if we hadn’t come, huh?”

“I… I thought I could do it all on my own. I was wrong. Boy, howdy was I wrong. I… can you let me go? All’s well?”

“Oi!” Spike shouted. “Thought he was a good guy?”

Buffy shook her head, “Oh, he’s good all right, he’s…” she stopped, looking up then at him. “Uh…”

Arthur slipped Buffy’s grip. “I almost didn’t make it – it was getting into my mind. You saved me.” He pushed his arm, its sleeve ripped jaggedly and bleeding, in front of Faith.

“Guys?” Connie backed up to the mound, looking over toward the third base line.

All along the dugout, figures were emerging. Drusilla’s white arms glowed in the dirt and darkness, snakes over her head as she swayed and howled. “Murder! Murder! The beautiful chaos ripped like butterfly wings!”

“Bitch needs a staking,” Rona said, stepping up beside Connie.

Buffy snatched Arthur’s lapels. “You don’t have some magic anti-vampire bomb in there, do you?”

He shook his head mutely.

The slayers arranged themselves, backs to the mound, while vampires advanced onto the infield from both dugouts.

Drusilla stopped five feet away from Buffy and stomped one foot. “Daddy! You’ve been very bad.”

The vampires behind her closed ranks, brandishing their weapons.

Spike thought he felt Angel try to hide behind him.

“Plan?” Elisa asked.

“Run like fuck,” Spike supplied.

“We outnumber you, slayers,” Mose said, walking calmly up from home plate. “And you are completely surrounded. But there’s no reason this has to be bloody. Surrender the mage and the vampires, and we’ll allow you to retreat. There can be mercy between enemies.” He smiled, extending his hands graciously.

Buffy stepped forward, tapping her ax against her palm. “You call this outnumbered? Surrounded? Oh I don’t think so.”

Arthur, finding himself no long locked in a slayer’s loving embrace, scrambled for the innermost point of the pitcher’s mound.

Faith picked up her stake.

Connie looked over her shoulder at Spike.

He smiled down at her. “Be a tiger,” he said.

Buffy led the charge straight at Mose.

The big vampire caught the haft of her swing with his forearm in a block that would have shattered a lesser man’s arm. Buffy didn’t let her surprise register, immediately following up into a kick that hit his chest like a brick wall.

The big vampire grunted, pulling the ax haft in to draw her off-balance and delivering a punch like a bag of wet cement to her ribs.

She flipped over her own weapon and tore it from his grip. Swung, missed, dodged, missed, dodged, and then there was the delicate sound of a chain breaking and a gold star of David flew through the air.

Later, in the version of events recounted to Giles, Buffy would claim to have guessed that taking out Mose would demoralize the vampires who had served him so long, Drusilla long having proven NOT the tactical genius of the family.

She would also exaggerate how easy the rest of the battle was.

Still there was a moment of stillness on all sides as the tiny star landed quietly admist ashes and dust.

Then, “MOVE!” Faith shouted, “Take ‘em in passing if you can!” She punched through the chest of the vampire in front of her and took off for the east gate.

Once in the tunnel to the gate, with a wall to their back and a limited space to be invaded, they regrouped. Spike was hanging off Angel’s side like a badly damaged suit. Angel had tossed his sword to Connie, who had lost her own weapon, and now mostly just twitched, reaching toward the combat as though he could direct it.

Buffy and Faith both finished off the vamps they were fighting and turned as one, waving the group to run ahead of them. They made a break for the cars.

“Don’t you soddin’ DARE…” Spike began, but had to finish “… carry me!” as Angel swept his legs up.

Buffy and Faith ended up in the Volkswagon together. Connie followed Angel into the Toyota, though Spike slapped her hands away when she tried to see him comfortably settled.

Tires squealed. They drove down Carnegie like it was going up in flames. Fortunately, there was no one else on the street.

They parked on Grandview Road and tumbled out of the cars with weapons in hand, looking down the street at a pursuit that didn’t come. The pre-dawn light was bleaching the stars from the horizon. Drusilla and her companions likely had returned to their lair to count their losses and wait out the day.

“I need a drink,” Spike announced to the silence. Spines straightened. Heads turned.

Spike started up the stairs to the house, not looking back at them. It was the first really clear look Faith had gotten of him. Fresh blood glinted in the streetlight under the thick encrusting dirt on his back. He wore nothing but a very bedraggled pair of sweats that may have been orange and his hair was a wind-tossed mess.

There was a giggle from Elisa. “We saved him,” she said. “I just noticed. We won!”

“Shit!” Faith threw her dagger at the pavement. It bounced wildly. “Where’s Arthur?”

The slayers looked at each other as though expecting one of them to produce him from a back pocket.

Buffy ignored this. She walked purposely up the front steps.

Spike yanked on the front door and cursed when he found it locked. He turned, about to call for one of the girls to let him in, when he saw Buffy standing not two feet from him. Her face was stern. Determined Slayer Face. Robbed of all color under the sodium light.

“Luv…” he began.

Buffy crushed herself against him, sobbing, and over her head Spike wore an expression of stunned relief.

Angel came up behind Faith, putting his hand on her shoulder before she could turn to see the couple on the porch, lit and above them as if they were on stage. She turned, and was stunned, momentarily, but turned away immediately, her movements jerky as she snatched the dagger up from the pavement.

Buffy stepped back, brows lowered, and smacked him, open palm across the face, hard enough to make him totter, nearly losing his balance. He came up again with a hand gingerly touching his cheek.

“ _’No you don’t but thanks for saying it’_???!!”

Through a shocked smile, he said, “Been waiting two years to say that?”

“THANKS FOR SAYING IT?”

“Love, I was dying. Literally in the process of dying!”

She raised her hand and he flinched. She lowered it again. Took a shaking breath. “Next time, pick better last words.”

“I’ll try,” he said, smiling, and she threw her arms around him again. Teeth hit teeth – it was a messy kiss, and ended when he winced again, for real. “Luv… luv… back’s half gone.”

“Oh god, oh sorry, oh…” she turned immediately into fussing mode, unsure where to put her hands.

Someone cleared their throat. Angel stood on the top step, blocking half the light, one hand still on Faith’s shoulder. “Some of us would like to go inside before daylight?”

Spike laughed again and pulled Buffy away from the door so Faith could get the key in the lock.

Quietly, they all shuffled in to the house and began the orderly work of tending wounds and arranging beds.

***

Angel found Faith sitting on the edge of her bed, scrubbing non-existent blood off her dagger.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey yourself,” she said. “Q give you a place to bunk?”

He rubbed the back of his head. “She was thinking… here.” When Faith looked up he shrugged. “I’m longer than the couch.”

With a degree of casualness that impressed Angel, she asked, “Where’s B?”

“Dinning room. They’ve set up some blankets and pillows on the table. Doesn’t look comfortable, but…?” He shrugged again.

“But Spike’s there,” Faith finished, and nearly scrubbed her hand into the dagger’s edge.

“Hey,” Angel sat down next to her. “Faith, Spike…”

“What? He’s not worth it?” She finally looked up, finally stopped scrubbing. “In case you haven’t noticed, Angel, I’m not worth it, either. We’re the messed up ones. Shouldn’t I get even that? I mean, I know B’s Cinderella, right? And I’m the ugly stepsister, but come on! YOU’RE Prince Charming. You and B, you step over us on your way to your happy ever after. Can’t I even get the leftover guy?”

Angel frowned at her. “Leftover? Faith, would you listen to yourself?” He snatched her hand away from the dagger in her lap before she could start polishing again. “Listen to me. I’m not intending on stepping over anyone. As for Spike… Spike believes in the big-time Broadway-musical-ending forever love. He surrenders his heart to every girl he falls for like he’s never been hurt and this one’s the last. It’s stupid. Overwrought. You don’t want that.”

“What I want…”

“You don’t want that,” he repeated, firmly. “Every guy you hold, you hold him expecting to let go. Like a throwing dagger. That’s how it feels to be in your arms.”

She tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear. “Ang… what the hell? I mean, you and me… we never…”

“We did spend some time in each other’s minds,” he reminded her. “And,” he captured her second hand, pressed them together between them. “I also have a hard time… not letting go.”

A smile cracked Faith’s lips and lit up her face. “Bull,” she said, twisting his hands teasingly. “You’re the king of never-let-go, broody man.”

“No, it's true,” he shook his head. “I hang on to the emotion, but I let go of the girl. You left someone out of your little ‘messed up’ club, you know."

"You're not messed up. You're... perfect."

"I spent one hundred years in hell!”

“Yeah, well I did four in maximum security,” she poked his ribs. “With a cell mate who never shaved her pits.”

“Okay,” he said, “You win. Now can I have half the bed or what?”

“You better not snore.”

He blinked, offended, “I’m a vampire.”

“Yeah.” She poked him again. “No drooling, either.”

They moved closer together, somehow, just fitting into each other's space, smiling.

***

“Finally!” Spike grabbed the hot mug from Connie’s hands the second it was in his reach.

Buffy sat on the edge of the dinning table, her feet on a chair-seat, and watched him drink. He sat cross-legged in the middle of the table, surrounded like pillows and wrapped in bandages like some strange, bedraggled sultan. “Do you forgive me?” she asked.

He raised an eyebrow at her. “Got m’drink now, all’s forgiven.”

“You stupid vampire. I’m not talking about the blood.”

They’d stripped, washed, and bandaged him before relenting to his constant demands for a hot cup o’ the O-neg. The whining had gotten near intolerable.

“Oh, call me stupid. That’ll earn you some points.”

Connie slipped into one of the dining chairs, folding her arms on the table-edge. “We’ll find her, that mad Drusilla. We’ll kill her.”

Spike flinched.

“You still think she’s ‘some kind of innocent’?” Connie demanded.

“Forgive me if it’s hard to think about killin’ someone you loved for a hundred years! ‘S not like I don’t know it’s gotta be done.”

Buffy snuck her hand over to his. “Maybe she’ll leave town. Without someone to take care of her, she’s, well, she’s not big on the grand schemes.”

“Polite way to say she has the attention span of a ferret.” Spike set his empty mug down by his knee. “God, I could murder a cigarette.”

“Not in the house,” Elisa called from the kitchen. Doors and drawers were banging, things being put away. She came in with an armful of sheets. “Ready to bed down on the couch, Buffy?”

She looked down at her hand next to Spike’s. She lifted one finger, brushing the side of his. “Not just yet.”

Spike shook his head. “Buffy?”

“Hm?”

He pressed his lips to her forehead. “Sleep, love. I’ll be here in the morning.”

Slowly, cautiously, she allowed herself to believe it.

 

EPILOGUE

Arthur waved. He had a large bouquet of gerber daisies in one hand. “Don’t kill me,” he said, smiling.

Faith slouched against the door. “You don’t know how far from a joke that is, Benedict.”

“Hey! I told you your guy would make it through. I had to do what the oracle dictated. I saved the city, maybe even the world.”

“Jury’s still out on that.”

“The Queen’s in hiding. Some say she’s gone. Nary a vamp on the street. Victory for team Slayer, and it’s all because of me. C’mon… I didn’t tell you because I didn’t expect you to help, all right? I know you guys, you’re not here permanently.”

“Actually, we kinda are.”

“Good guys don’t stay in Cleveland,” Arthur said. “Bad guys… we keep them a long time. And guys like me. But heroes? They rookie here then trade to a town down where it’s warm all the time.”

“Well, word to you, Art.” She plucked the flowers from his hand. “I did my rookie years in So Cal.” Stepping back, she slammed the door in his face.

She had a quiet smile on her face when she walked back into the dinning room.

Elisa was laying papers in front of Spike, one at a time, that he was studiously not looking at. “And this one’s an efficiency in Ohio City. Look at that cathedral ceiling! It’s a steal.”

“Yes, love, with the skylight so I can be burned in the comfort of my own bed.”

“Well, how about this basement apartment on Hessler Street? Built in 1824, gorgeous woodwork…”

“I’m not buyin’ a bleedin’ apartment from you!”

“It’s not just the hellmouth, you know, Cleveland has among the fewest sunny days of an American city. AND there are already vampire-friendly services in the area. I checked the butcher on Green Road…”

Angel wandered in from the kitchen, blinking blearily over a mug that could have held coffee, if you pretended hard enough. He dropped into a chair and pulled one of the advertisements toward himself. “I could go for a place like that,” he said.

Faith dropped the bouquet of daisies on top of it and dropped herself into Angel’s lap. “Thinking of settling here, Big A?”

He shrugged. “I’m between places right now.”

“Spike’s not,” Buffy said. She trotted in to the room, a towel wrapped around her head. “Spike…”

“Is gonna live wherever the hell he damn well feels like living,” Spike said, looking pointedly across the room at her.

Buffy wrung her hands and mouthed a few silent words as though mentally rehersing. “Okay, okay, Spike, please, would you come back with me? We’ll find you a place in London.”

“You should go,” Angel said. He tilted his head toward Buffy. “Reconnect. Your accent’s slipping.”

Spike’s mouth dropped open. “My WHAT?”

“Hey, Punk Rock,” Faith stretched languidly against Angel’s shoulder and threw a light backhand into Spike’s chest, “You weren’t planning on staying here, remember?”

“Drusilla…”

“Still out there, yeah, but I got a strong lead, and a mage ready to bend over backward to keep me from killing him.” Faith nudged the bouquet and smiled knowingly. “What’ve you got?”

Spike stood with a sigh. He held out a hand for Buffy, “A powerful urge to leave Cleveland,” he said.

THE END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still hungry for more? We have the DVD Special "Making Of" as the (really) last chapter!


	17. Mad Queen Special DVD features!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so I wanted to post this after I posted the last of "Mad Queen" - these are my pre-writing notes that I went back and looked at recently and had me cracking up because, well, you'll see.
> 
> I've added commentary in italics.

Cleveland-based Spike/Buffy fanfic.

_Yes, that's the first thing I wrote down. And I laughed looking at it, because after the first three chapters, I think I forgot. You know when I had that "who should get Spike in the end" poll? Yeah, so had forgotten this was supposed to be Spuffy!_

Want a story in Cleveland, damn it, that’s, that’s, Cleveland-y!

_This I succeeded in, I think._

So, what to do in the story, aside from have the characters visit Lakeview Cemetery and the flats?

Plot must have a little Pron in it.

_Ooookay, here we failed to hit the mark!_

I’d love Spuffy. Spangel too. Spaith? Hee hee.  
The ‘everyone loves Spike’ story.

Drusilla! I love Dru and she deserves to be a big bad. Spike has come to Cleveland looking for Drusilla. Faith is already there? Maybe a few more baby slayers?  
He meets up with them at The Chamber. (snicker)

There are rumors of a “Mad Queen of Cleveland” and it has to be Dru. Spike (having survived NFA of course) left Angel to find her (with Angel’s blessing. The two are kinda getting along now.)

They have to get to the Queen – there’s a court of sorts and they’re very protective. First contact is a human who supposedly runs errands for the court. He’s a fetish artist.

_This became Arthur! Wooo Art!_

I want a scene in the old arcade too. Where Spike can feel at home. ☺

_Yes, one of my main goals was simply to show off an 1800's shopping mall._

What’s Dru doing? Unleashing hell on earth, of course.  
Some elaborate plan.

I want Spike to end up enthralled to Dru, at least for a little bit. Thrall is so kinky!!

That can be like a climax. Be nice if he ends up doing it to save Faith or some Slayerette.

Slayerettes – how shall I name them?   
Constanza  
Eliza  
Quasar  
Hee hee.

Plot:

Spike meets up with Slayers. Interrogates Willy-like-character which leads to them attending a fetish ball. (cute note – maybe Faith convinces Spike to come as her ‘slave’? hee hee.)

At the fetish ball they discover Drusilla. C’mon, how could she NOT be there? But she’s well protected – most everyone at the ball is her minion.  
Somehow they fight their way out?  
(After or before the ball, Faith calls Buffy and they laugh at poor Spikey’s expense!)

_Didn't turn out quite so Faith and Buffy buddy-buddy moment, did it?_

Dru sends a minion to Spike? Where is he staying? I could see Faith staying in Lakewood or Ohio City. Or the Flats! (Here’s a thought – a fond remembrance –she finds a lavish apartment that used to be Trick’s. God how I miss Mr. Trick!)

_Did end up slipping in a shout to Mr. Trick, though not as the former owner of Faith's place. Instead I put Faith and the Slayerettes in a friend's house - he had lots of roommates, lots of room for slayers!_

Spike turns down Dru’s invitation, though Faith wants him to go – easy way in.

Slayerettes hit on Spike!! Totally!

Drusilla is the “Mad Queen of Cleveland” and she’s running the town, turning to her liking.

The Great Lakes Theatre Festival cast is being held hostage by vamps, forced to enact ‘A Christmas Carol” over and over for Dru.

_This was to be an inside joke - the GLTF does "A Christmas Carol" every year to pay the bills and many cast members are bloody sick of it. But, since the story takes place in the summer, I decided to change to 'A Midsummer's Night's Dream" since I thought Dru would be way into that._

Spike tries to get Angel’s help? Buffy’s?

Drusilla captures one of the Slayerettes (or Faith herself!) and Spike has to trade himself for her. (Because that’s my big kink.)

Followed by lots of porny kinky sex with the Dru. Drusilla lets Spike in on her plan – she wants her family back, Spike first and foremost – she came to Cleveland because of Faith, because she knew Spike would want to protect the fragile dark Slayer – so like him. The next step is to get Daddy. Spike knows where Daddy is.

Spike offers to help her if she lets people go?

_That was it - that was all the plot I had figured out before I started writing. Now, around chapter 10 or so I started writing outlines, just ahead of the writing, but these were frequently altered and I deleted each plot point as I wrote it. Still, I think it's neat to see where this all began._


End file.
